Terms of Use

Your use and viewership of The Property Tribune website and its contents come with some terms; please ensure you understand these fully.

Objectivity

Our goal is to encompass all relevant perspectives and offer accurate information to empower users in making their own choices. We actively avoid situations that could compromise our impartiality or damage our reputation for honesty and fairness.

While we do receive revenue and referral fees through advertising and affiliate links, we do not sell our viewpoints or manipulate our analysis to solely benefit our partners’ commercial interests. Although we may facilitate referrals to external entities, we do not engage in the sale of products or services, and we have no direct financial stake in the items and services we cover.

The content and editorial direction of our platform are not subject to approval by sponsors, advertisers, or partners. Our editorial team maintains complete control over the content we publish.

We provide information, not advice

Although we want to help users make better decisions, it’s not possible for us to publish content that is directed to a specific individual or tailored to their personal circumstances.

We will publish information, tools and calculators that are designed to help our readers make better informed decisions.

We will never recommend a particular product or strategy as being appropriate for our readers circumstances, needs, goals, and objectives.

Apolitical

The Property Tribune is strictly and proudly apolitical, meaning we are 100% politically neutral. We do not possess or display any political attitudes, content, or bias towards any political party or activist cause.

I wish to register a complaint

If there’s any content on The Property Tribune you take issue with, please refer to our Complaints Policy.

I have a property story

If you have a property story and would like it to be covered in The Property Tribune, then, by all means, contact our editorial team at editor@thepropertytribune.com.au.

I’d like to contribute regular articles

In addition to our own internal newsroom, The Property Tribune invites real estate practitioners to contribute regular, meaningful and insightful content. In this way, we will collectively develop a property news site that tells it like it is, from people in the know.

These guidelines assist people writing (or pitching) articles for The Property Tribune to ensure consistency, clarity and style.

If you’re going to write anything on (or send story idea to) The Property Tribune, then you need to be able to answer this question – how does it help inform the reader about the Australian property market?

What’s in it for the reader? What will they learn? Will it add some value, provide clarity, inform and lead to a better understanding? What’s ‘newsy‘ about the information you have?

No self-promotion, no spruiking, no one’s got anything to sell here. Just an independent, honest view on what is happening in the largest industry in the country – the A$8 trillion property sector.

To apply to be a regular contributor, please visit this page and complete the form.

General contributor guidelines

Please read the full guidelines below, and ensure:

  • all articles are your own work;
  • no links to any outside websites or affiliate links in the body of the article EVER!
  • you are not promoting your own services or a business you have an interest in;
  • nothing in the article is ‘political’ or ‘pushing a cause’ – The Property Tribune is 100% apolitical; and,
  • any perceived or real bias or conflict of interest should be addressed with a disclosure within (or at the end of) the article itself.

Australian spelling

  • always use Australian spelling, unless the word is part of a publication or organisation name;
  • use ‘re’ in ‘centre’, ‘s’ over ‘z’ (organisation), program (not ‘programme’) unless it is the name of a particular institution.

Abbreviations

  • please do not use ppl, lol or such slang/abbreviations.

Acronyms 

  • acronyms (eg AWIA, FI, API) should be spelled out with the acronym in parentheses in the first instance and all caps thereafter. First reference: “She is with the Australian Property Institute (API)”. Second reference: “At API she does x”.

At symbol (@)

  • use only within email addresses and Twitter handles or within scientific measurements. Do not use ‘@’ in titles, headings or regular text as an abbreviation for the word ‘at’.

Bullet points

  • where the list is part of a sentence (preceded by a colon), begin each point in lower case with no commas or semi-colons, putting a full-stop at the end of the last bullet point;
  • if the list is not part of a sentence, begin each point in upper case and use full stops at the end of each complete sentence;
  • use number points when you will be referring back to them or if the order of the points is important.

Capitalisation 

  • our style is for minimal capitalisation; that is, only the first letter of the heading or title is capitalised, along with any proper nouns;
  • only people’s names, position titles, names of work groups, organisational units, degree titles (e.g. Bachelor of Art) and publications should be capitalised;
  • almost everything else should be in sentence case. Including the article heading.

Dates 

  • Thursday 17 March 1917 (no commas). Use 12 May, unless directly quoting someone saying “May 12″. Not 12th of May!

Dashes 

  • to separate a range of dates or numbers. In this case, the dash should NOT have spaces on either side e.g. 7–8 pm;
  • a single dash can be used to introduce an explanation or expansion of what comes before it e.g. “But when the firestorm of January 2013 ravaged the nation’s capital, much of the two-storey brick home was destroyed – seemingly beyond repair”;
  • a pair of dashes can be used to indicate asides and parentheses, forming a more distinct break than commas would e.g. “Helen has only seen the apartment once in her life and – until her flight from Sydney – had never invested in property.”

Enquiry, enquiries 

  • not inquiry, unless it is an official investigation into something.

Exclamation points

  • an exclamation point marks an outcry or an emphatic or ironic comment. If in doubt, don’t use them!!! It’s not in keeping with our brand.

Gender-specific references

  • avoid gender-specific references where possible i.e. use ‘chair’ rather than ‘chairman/woman/person’.

Links

  • don’t link out to other websites from your articles (we never link out).
  • do link to the existing Company Page on The Property Tribune as part of your articles; for example, see how this article – Sydney CBD leases sell like hotcakes, as F&B tenancies on the up – links to the existing Company Page for Knight Frank on The Property Tribune – Knight Frank
  • do link to existing Individual Profiles on The Property Tribune as part of your articles; for example see how this article Property Funds Association of Australia appoints Melissa Kingham as President – links to the Individual Profile for Paul Healy on The Property Tribune – Paul Healy
  • do link to other relevant articles on The Property Tribune to support your story where relevant; for example see how this article Demand for flexible office space continues in early 2023 – links to a series of other articles on The Property Tribune.
  • do use ‘anchor text’ that describes the nature of the link, i.e.
    • link to Company Pages using the name of the company;
    • link to Individual Profiles using the name of the individual;
    • link to other articles on The Property Tribune using anchor text that describes the nature of the information that you’re linking to.
    • don’t include URLs using their ‘raw’ format, eg https://www.example.com/ or www.example.com

Money

  • use the dollar symbol followed by the figure ($1,000). Use a comma when referring to thousands or larger numbers;
  • use country abbreviation followed by currency symbol to denote currencies (A$1,000, US$1,000, NZ$1,000);
  • in headings, abbreviated forms of large numbers are acceptable, for example: $1B or $1M or $200K.

Numbers 

  • within regular prose, numbers one to nine should generally be spelt out and 10 and above should be numerals;
  • numeral form is acceptable when used together with a unit of measurement (weight, distance, date, time etc), in tables, in a series of numbers provided for comparison (e.g. 5 of 500 people), and in mathematical and scientific contexts;
  • when quoting percentages, it is more convenient to write and read ‘38% increase’ than ’38 per cent increase’ or even ‘thirty-eight per cent increase’.

Quotation marks

  • double quotation marks are only used for quoting speech or words from published work (i.e. newspapers, journals, books etc) e.g. “The development is world-class,” said Ms Developer.
  • single quote marks are used for:
    • emphasising in text e.g. The ‘real’ story behind the fire was…
    • quoting something inside a quote e.g. “Annabel said ‘The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain’ but she didn’t say why,” explained Mrs France;
  • quotation marks always come after the punctuation e.g. “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain,” Mrs France said. Unless the quote is not a full sentence e.g. Mrs France said the rain in Spain “falls mainly on the plain”.

Time 

  • preferred style for listing time is 10am and 2pm, not 10.00am and 2.00pm. Use a dash to show duration, not “to” (that is, 2–4pm not 2 to 4pm).

Titles 

  • publications, plays, movies, conferences, album titles can be italics.

URLs

  • use URLs that are descriptive of the topic of your article, e.g.
    • do use /lifestyle/architects-adapt-to-small-space-living/
    • don’t use /lifestyle/43jfd232
  • don’t change the URL after you’ve hit publish (this breaks the links)
  • do always make sure that your article is published in the most appropriate category (ask about our ‘Category Publishing Guide’ if in doubt).