Prosper Australia

Reprinted from academic e-zine The Conversation In a previous article, I analysed four of the common arguments used by those who deny there is a bubble in Australia’s residential property market. The bubble deniers have employed other explanations for the largest run-up in prices in Australia’s 131 years of land sales records. Restrictive government regulations [...]

12 January 2012 Prosper calls for timely, rigorous and transparent statistics on property sales to be collected by the ABS. “Property is the single largest asset market in Australia – worth around $5 Trillion,” Prosper Australia Campaign Manager David Collyer said today. “It is of profound importance to individual and national prosperity. The lack of [...]

The Australian property market ended 2011 on the ground in a foetal position after a serious assault by Harsh Reality. Symptoms include: • A year’s supply of unsold houses on the market • Low and falling building applications • Low and falling finance approvals • Failing auctions nationwide • First home buyer indifference • Universal [...]

    The City of Boroondara craves more parkland. Council wants open space within 500 metres of all residents without crossing a major road. This is a worthy objective that will improve the health and wellbeing of all, and every local government should embrace the idea. There are a few problems. Boroondara will have to [...]

photo credit: Ennor 17 November 2011 MELBOURNE:- The number of unsold properties in Melbourne has risen another 6.2 per cent in the last month, following a 20.4 per cent rise earlier, and an 18 per cent rise the month before that. “’Stale Stock’ on the market is up a net 51 per cent in three [...]

10 November 2011 MELBOURNE:- The Growth Corridor Plan announced by the Baillieu Government presents Melbourne with big challenges. How to pay for the massive infrastructure needed is front and centre – and unmentioned in the Plan. “Demand for new and better transport links around developments and the extra traffic burden they bring onto the existing [...]

photo credit: DrWurm A term employed in Vagrancy statutes to test whether an individual has any apparent ability to provide for himself or herself financially. The Law frowns upon people who make their living outside formal employment. Yet it bows deep before land and property. Irrational confidence has inflated property prices so far they bear [...]

photo credit: lynac The bullhawks are out in force, talking up last quarter’s smaller than expected price falls. Somehow here is evidence of the end of the downturn. Risk on! Throw caution to the winds! Really? It is easy to see why the bullhawks focus on that and claim it is simply noise, not a [...]

photo credit: Jakob E 28 September 2011 MELBOURNE:- 40,000 young families turned away from a lifetime of heavy debt and bitter disappointment in the last year refusing to accept Australia’s grossly inflated house prices, according to a survey overnight by website RateCity. “Here is the evidence FHB’s are on strike, as we announced in March,” [...]