Prosper Australia

16 May 2013 MELBOURNE:- The federal budget initiative to omit conveyancing Stamp Duty for retirees down-sizing to a smaller home acknowledges just how destructive and behavior-distorting this vile tax is, says Prosper Australia. “This is a disgusting, economically dishonest policy,” David Collyer Campaign Manager Prosper Australia said today. “Again, the baby boomer generation is being [...]

15 May 2013 MELBOURNE:- Yesterday’s federal budget highlights again Australia’s unbalanced reliance on wage and salary taxation for government revenues, says Prosper Australia. “Taxation discourages. That is why we tax gambling, alcohol and tobacco. Unfortunately, it has the same effect on work. We tax it so heavily it must also be a very bad economic [...]

  Last week I offered a solution to the blight caused by vacant or disused sites in central Melbourne. Everyone is diminished by landowners leaving valuable land unused while they agitate for rezoning profits. The Age’s Bruce Guthrie hopped into the discussion for a hand-wringing but offered no solution.  The problem would be reduced by [...]

  The Melbourne City Council has been urged to apply differential rates “to sites defined as vacant or derelict” by its Future of Melbourne committee. They name to shame the Savoy Tavern on Spencer Street, the Argus building on Latrobe Street and bare land at 567 Collins Street as examples of developer-owned blight. Councillors loathe [...]

  A fact-free defence of urban planners in The Conversation yesterday has left me fuming about how this group is immersed in process and blind to The Game being played around them. The Game boosts land prices, creates serviced land shortages and impoverishes all who need shelter. Planners are proud to quickly turn around conforming applications.  [...]

  7 March 2013 Prosper Australia today issues its update of ‘Englobo’ holdings of listed property developers (attached), as revealed in their audited half year accounts recently released to the Australian Stock Exchange. Based on last year’s sales – the current pulse of activity – listed developers hold an average 20.4 years supply, up from [...]

  The ABS House Price Indexes 8 Capital Cities Dec 2012 6416.0 was released this morning and shows prices rising 2.1 per cent for the year and 1.6 per cent for the quarter. This result will encourage those who see expensive land as a badge of honor. It provides no respite for Australia’s 1.1 million [...]

30 January  2013   Prosper repeats its call for timely, national data on property sales to be collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. “Buying and selling houses in Australia suffers from ‘information asymmetry’ – some participants know a lot more than others about current market prices,” David Collyer Campaign Manager Prosper Australia said today. [...]

  Linc Energy today announced a major shale oil and gas discovery around Coober Pedy in South Australia.  Unrisked prospective reserves have been separately estimated by two independent consultancies at 103 and 233 billion barrels of oil equivalent. That is an extraordinary find. The low estimate is equivalent to Kuwait’s proven reserves and the high [...]

  The latest annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey ranks all Australian capitals as Severely Unaffordable. They’re right and the statistics back them. Housing has two elements, the building and the land.  What fluctuates is the land price; structures are worth only what they cost to build.  High land prices mean current buyers are committing [...]