The Home Buyers Strike was launched to warn prospective home owners that now is not the time to enter the market. Sign our Total Abstainers Pledge so we can demonstrate that this is a genuine movement for people who expect that housing is a human right, not a speculative priority.

As of this noon today, 1100 people have signed the pledge nationwide. If 200 are from our hometown of Melbourne, this weekend’s 1000 auctions will be quieter. Two hundred people will be saved from 25 years of mortgage misery. We can’t sit by and let innocent people bail out investors who are leaving the market in a screaming rush. Auction supply levels have been at spring frenzy levels for too long. The alarm bells are ringing loudly but nobody is warning buyers.

Resources:
Lobby Your MP Letter
Buyers Strike Video
Home Buyers Strike poster (PDF) – pin it up in your local laundrette!
Home Buyers strike poster jpeg – better for email.
Sign the Total Abstainer’s Pledge

What We Want

  • 10,000 people to sign our Total Abstainers Pledge
  • Negative gearing limited to new home construction, then phased out completely
  • Stamp Duty eliminated
  • Abolishing First Home Owner Grants (never again!)

Prosper’s longer term aims include:

  • Funding the abolition of stamp duty and negative gearing with a higher and flatter Land Value Tax
  • Reducing the threshold on Land Tax to zero
  • Continuing to transfer taxes off incomes, GST and onto fixed assets like land, iron ore and the electromagnetic spectrum.
  • Government’s at all levels are guilty of turning land and housing into a speculative commodity. To think we will avoid the calamity that has hit our northern neighbours defies economic logic. Our 12 year housing bubble is the longest on record. $805 billion has been capitalised into a bubble of epic proportions. Land Value Tax is the only tax that can’t be dodged via tax havens. It also turns off the speculative spigot, transforming land bankers into active builders. The Henry Tax Review stated that Land Tax will be inevitable in a highly mobile world. The global fetish with property bubbles only underscores this.

    A special thanks to Bullion Baron for putting our original press release on GetUp and all those who helped the Buyers Strike storm up the GetUp Suggestions forum from #111th to 1st place in barely 2 weeks. The importance of this issue must be rammed home to those running the country. Raw numbers are all that counts for them.

    See all our Home Buyers Strike posts

    Don’t Buy Now Twitter page.

    Join our Home Buyers Strike facebook group where comments like this zinger from Adam came through overnight:

    Hey everyone it’s great to finally see a movement like this. I have already bought a house, and am now up to my eyeballs in so much debt that i am under a constant dark cloud of stress and anxiety. I laugh in contempt every time i hear an evil fat baby boomer describe how it was just as hard in their day, and then i’ll go to an auctio…n out of interest and watch in despair as the young couple holding a child, meekly trying to bid for a simple roof over their head gets trampled by a silver haired Mercedes driving asshole adding yet another property to their already disgustingly bloated portfolio.

    Politicians couldn’t care less as they have two major concerns. Firstly, their own wealth, and secondly, the votes of their bloated wealthy voters and campaign donators.

    Bring their world of greed down!


    Media links:

    David Collyer on Ch7 Sunrise
    Online campaign targets high cost of housing
    Property Market slump – Blame Me – the ball starts rolling
    Home Buyers Strike Attempts to Cripple the market – yahoo scaremongering.
    First Home Buyers strike growing – Herald Sun

    Remember the importance of taxing the right activities by listening to:

    David Collyer and Karl Fitzgerald discussing the Home Buyers Strike (23/03/11) on the Renegade Economists
    Magic Money – week 3 of the Buyers Strike on the Renegades with a number of interview highlights played. See the show notes.

    Taxing Mines – Background Briefing

    Let’s hope this campaign gets a few people looking at the economic justice we are missing in the current system. If wages are so limited vis capital gains, we must ask what sort of capitalism our leaders have planned for us. Is paying 40% of our incomes for somewhere to live the sort of freedom we are satisfied with?

    The Prosper E-news service can be signed up from the home page (half way down the right hand side).