Prosper Australia

  photo credit: robertivanc The great property speculation game is over in America and Europe.  The music has stopped. Forty years of steadily increasing pressure has been released.  Houses are worth a fraction of what people paid in better times, while the giant mortgages they took on remain. Meanwhile, Australia parties on.  We play the [...]

  photo credit: Zach K   The Melbourne versus Sydney rivalry has been reignited – Melbourne’s population is growing faster and is projected to overtake Sydney by 2037, a new report predicts. Going Nowhere, a report by BIS Shrapnel for a property developer lobby group, shows Melbourne building new homes at twice the rate of [...]

I had a letter published in The Sunday Age on the 25th of May. Real estate agents and their constant spruiking of the “boom” had finally gotten up my nose. They go around crowing about the rising prices while ordinary Australians get priced out of the market. When you really think about it who benefits [...]

photo credit: midlander1231   For too long, the media eagerly reported the property spruikers’ claim ‘prices only go higher’. This ‘truth’ turned homeowners into speculators and led a whole generation of first home buyers to commit to enormous mortgages they will only pay off after thirty years of unrelenting sacrifice. This week the public story [...]

photo credit: Congratulations Citizens! The Economist says your home is the most expensive among the advanced countries we generally compare ourselves with. Before you puff out your chest in pride, consider what this means. Mortgage repayments are the heaviest in the world, leaving the least disposable income for food, clothing and transport. This is a [...]

Part 3 to Phil Anderson’s Asset Bubbles Forever talk – what is the future for this commodity bubble?

Part 2 in Phil Anderson’s Asset Bubbles Forever presentation. Phil talks about WD Gann, 18 year cycles and interprets the 1929 Depression. Cycles are essential understandings and here Phil builds the framework. Check Economic Indicator Services for more from Phil.

Is The Age suffering from split personality disorder? On page 8 of The Sunday Age (18.4.10) we read that house shopping is a “nightmare”, the market is “out of control” and that we are heading toward being a rental society where only the rich can afford to own a house. As Maris Beck points out [...]

photo credit: Erica_Marshall Stephen Long at the ABC has written two articles in 2 days on genuine tax reform, commenting on the rumour that the Henry Review will promote a broad based Land tax, including the family home. Let’s hope Ken Henry’s press release starts off with ‘Income tax cut in half, Land Tax tax [...]

photo credit: earthsharing australia Thomas Kokkinos-Kennedy Semester 1, 2009, Assessment Two Research Essay Are the concepts and ideas proposed by Henry George in 1879 still relevant in understanding socio-economic aspects of the property market in contemporary Melbourne? This essay will begin with some background to Henry George the man and his historical context, followed by [...]