Housing Affordability

Yesterday’s 0.25 per cent cut in interest rates has been framed in today’s press as great news for people with existing mortgages and those seeking to enter the property market.

Fair enough. On the face of it, it is good news. Repayments on the average 25 year home $300,000 loan will be $50 less this month, thanks to the jolly fellows in red and white fleecy suits at the RBA. But it’s even better news for wealthy property owners and real estate agents, who are both set to reap the rewards of an impending buying frenzy.

No issue in Australian life is framed in a more upside-down, nonsensical way than the issue of property prices. The more the market heats up, the more we sing and dance and rejoice. That, despite “housing affordability” continuing to be the greatest misnomer in Australian life since the show Australia’s Got Talent.

Continue reading "Why the rate cut will just create a deeper rut" »

Lies, damn lies and statistics. Without denigrating the excellent, proactive work by the Herald Sun in commissioning NATSEM research showing Australian households are $23 better off per day than five years ago, this figure is a load of horse manure.

Every Australian knows it, not least Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott, whose only common ground is the belief that Australians are doing it tougher than ever. Which we mostly are.

There is of course a legitimate line that many Australians delight in casting themselves as perennial battlers, even as they purchase ever bigger, flatter TVs and ever larger homes. Rampant consumerism can never be discounted in any measure of our material wellbeing. But as NATSEM’s figures show, it’s the essentials that are rising in cost, not the expendibles.

Continue reading "Tell us we’re better off when houses are affordable" »

When NSW Labor is wiped off the map tomorrow, it will partly be because, as Joe Hildebrand pointed out, the Labor government has rather impressively committed every sin known to mankind. But mostly, it’ll be because the government is widely viewed as having reduced this state to tatters. The question is: Is NSW really in such bad nick?

I have lived in NSW for about 30 of my 41 years. The sun still shines, the trains still crawl and the water still runs, except of course for that time in 1998 when it was full of nasty parasites.

In most respects, this state is nowhere near the basket case some make it out to be. Obviously, NSW would have benefited from something approaching a competent government for much of the last 16 years, but it’s not all gloom and doom in Woolloomooloo, and beyond. Let’s take a closer look.

Continue reading "NSW: It’s not actually that bad. No, really." »

We won’t need a tourism industry in 20 years’ time. And forget about annual leave, school holidays and sibling rivalry too.

Because, at least according to a series of predictions this week, by 2030 Australia will be a jumble of stressed individuals who’ve spent 10 years scrimping and saving for a house deposit and will be too broke and possibly too frightened to contemplate bringing more than one child into the world. Instead the choice will be to hold on for dear life to careers and term deposit accounts that have been fought for long and hard.

Take real estate, for example.

Continue reading "Life’s looking grim in 2030" »

News that New South Wales may soon pass laws to enable land seizures for private housing shouldn’t surprise us. 

It’s the latest in a series of alarming headlines about the state of urban development and planning in NSW.

Putting aside the benefits or otherwise of compulsory land acquisition – a tool for achieving public planning goals, already embedded within NSW legislation – it’s worth revisiting the core issues driving the latest proposal – and the range of options to address them.

Continue reading "Yes to housing affordability, but don’t take my home" »