Bargain sours as court rules $1000 house sale unlawful ANDREA PETRIE,The Age,may 10 2012. RONALD Kousal must have thought he had the bargain of a lifetime when he bid $1000 for a five-bedroom house in Melbourne’s west – and the offer was accepted. But his luck ran out yesterday when the Supreme Court of [...]

  Slater & Gordon is investigating launching a class action on behalf of aggrieved borrowers and mortgagors of Bankwest and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The claims stem from Bankwest’s perceived behaviour following its 2008 takeover by the CBA, with many small property developers alleging their debts were unfairly called in.  Last month, National senator [...]

  VICTORIA Police are investigating serious fraud allegations against a former Property manager at a large Melbourne agency, who has been accused of misappropriating more than $560,000 from clients of the public company. The property manager  alleged to have siphoned money from property owners using a network of fake contractors, according to affidavits in a [...]

APRIL 02, 2012 ARTICLE 7 OF 24 Sacked worker too short and too young CLAY LUCAS CAN you lose a job for looking too young, or being too short? Not lawfully – but that didn’t stop a Melbourne real estate agent using them as reasons for dismissing a casual employee. Sarah Kershaw, 160 centimetres tall [...]

Any employers who were in doubt about the correct answer to the question, “Does my workplace need a social media policy?” should doubt no longer. In a decision handed down just before Christmas, Commissioner Roberts of Fair Work Australia reinstated an employee of Linfox who had been dismissed for material which the employee had posted [...]

An incident at Ceres,a prime urban ecological farm,involving produce has highlighted a broader issue, the poor management of thousands of contaminated sites across Victoria. In December, an Auditor-General’s report raised concerns about management practices at contaminated sites. ”The Department of Planning and Community Development, the Environment Protection Authority and councils are not effectively managing contaminated [...]

Changes affecting buying and selling property from 1 March 2012 – The following changes to real estate regulation took effect on 1 March 2012, as a result of amendments to the Estate Agents (Contracts) Regulations 2008 and Sale of Land Act 1962. Cooling-off rights for property buyers A buyer’s three-day cooling-off period on a sale [...]

A former solicitor has been accused in the Melbourne Magistrates Court of visiting gravesites to adopt the names of the dead to create false identities. The alleged gambling addict spent more than$13 million at casinos. Victoria  police prosecution opposed bail on the grounds that 6 properties had been unwittingly sold and at least another 9 [...]

A country pensioner is battling to prove she owns her home of almost 20 years after discovering it was not officially hers. She bought the Fish Creek property with her late husband 20 years ago and her lawyers found it was still registered to the original owner,who died last year. The company that did the [...]

Wellington Shire Council in Gippsland Victoria has angered over 2,000 landowners by offering them $1,500 in an effort to have them surrender their land. The council says the development,on a narrow spit of land near Golden Beach in Gippsland,was ‘inappropriate’ and should revert to it’s natural state. Owners,many of whom have held the land for [...]