The beautiful northern beaches of Australia are favourites among second home buyers as well as locals, yet property owners here may face costly repairs to help avoid potentially devastating landslides.
According to an assessment done by the government an estimated 17,000 homes are at risk of a landslip, this is more than double the number that saw similar reports just five years ago.
Many of these areas are potentially valuable properties. The costs would need to be paid for to improve such risks by the property owners rather than government here. Many believe that this is an expensive and unjustified imposition on such owners.
In some of these situations, further improvements are a must as property owners here want to further develop these properties. The value of doing so could improve home values as well as help to improve buy to let programs designed for tourism.
Homes in Australia were recently determined to be some of the most expensive in the world, coming in above the UK and US, and just under New Zealand. With house prices so high here, and the economy starting to slip as well as tourism's current downward trend, homeowners find such investments necessary but costly.
Such risk assessment has become mandatory here where a number of properties were lost during a landslide in the 1970's. Since then, the Australian Geomechanics Society has provided such assessments on the safety of such properties.
The main problems surrounding these northern beach properties are steep land, poor soil coupled by rain risks.
