photo credit: Nicholas Erwin At the moment, Victoria’s Metropolitan Fire Brigade and Country Fire Authority are funded by the Fire Services Levy, a charge added to fire insurance. But the FSL gives a free ride to uninsured property owners – they don’t pay for the level of fire cover provided. Free riders increase the cost [...]
photo credit: Dru! A survey of property investors in The Age today by Colemar Brunton shows sentiment delicately poised between those who see the market flat or falling and those anticipating further rises. This is not the bursting of The Great Australian Property Bubble that Prosper and many other commentators like Jeremy Grantham and [...]
photo credit: 10b travelling Clear-eyed media commentary in the national interest is rare and sweet. Alan Mitchell’s analysis of the Henry Tax Review in the Australian Financial Review - A tax on all your economic rents – is such a creature. He opens with a broadside at entrenched interests pretending the changes will affect the economy: [...]
photo credit: anarchosyn The Henry Tax Review’s highlighting of Land Tax as a policy direction is a welcome and encouraging development, says Prosper Australia. “This is THE tool to liberate the people of Australia from their current financial difficulties,” Prosper Australia’s Karl Fitzgerald said today. “Consider the enormous economic benefits this reform offers. “Taxing land [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Unconventional prophets are often vilified, particularly in their own country. Steve Keen is no exception. He is one of only a handful of academic economists to contest the rah rah rah of the property spivs who claim - wrongly and misleadingly - that real estate prices move in just one direction. Keen is regularly sought as a speaker and [...]
The Australian Tax Office has released figures on the extent of negative gearing in Australia ahead of the Henry Tax Review. This is no accident. They are preparing the ground for Ken Henry’s changes. The picture drawn is not pretty: it shows the nation’s ‘aspirational’ landlords, heavily weighted with borrowings, perched on a twig, [...]
photo credit: UGArdener This morning, Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Glen Stevens appeared on Seven Network’s Sunrise program to talk up interest rates and talk down the property market. Using tabloid television to broadcast RBA views is unprecedented. It prefers to communicate via densely written statements, opaque economic speak and background briefings to senior [...]