BLOG: housing

40,000 First Home Buyers On Strike

photo credit: Jakob E28 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...

Melbourne ‘Stale Stock’ hits 70,800

photo credit: Soon.17 September 2011 MELBOURNE:- Exponential growth in the number of unsold properties overhanging the Melbourne market continues, up 18 per cent in the last month alone. “In the last five months ‘Stale Stock’ in Melbourne postcodes 3000-3207 has...

Please, Please, Mr Premier!

photo credit: sky_mitchState Treasury’s brief to the incoming Baillieu Government, the Blue Book, urges tax reform to drive Victoria’s competitiveness. The Blue Book has apparently been leaked to The Age. It strongly recommends lowering the burden of state taxes,...

NSW Stamp Duty a foul and putrid mess

photo credit: dcmasterBarry O’Farrell was elected Premier of NSW in March this year. His first budget announced Tuesday raised a storm of protest – not over a realignment of government priorities to his conservative Coalition’s agenda, but on Stamp Duty. The previous...

Overindulgence has its consequences.

There are currently 377,300 houses for sale across Australia, according to SQM Research data released today - up 21.9 per cent on last year. Why is this significant? Well, we have some 8.9 million houses. A quick back of the envelope calculation tells me 3.79 per cent...

Australia has over 125,000 excess houses

photo credit: Dean Terry5 August 2011 MELBOURNE:- “Australia’s housing undersupply myth has just been exposed. We have overbuilt more than the USA,” Prosper Australia Campaign Manager David Collyer said today. “Prosper calculates Australia now has over 125,000 excess...

This will end in tears

photo credit: tinou bao27 July 2011 The AMP/NATSEM report on housing affordability released today draws a clear picture of Australia’s house price dilemma. It fails, however, in concluding house prices will remain stable for a decade while real incomes catch up. “This...

Melbourne housing ‘Stale Stock’ explodes

26 July 2011 MELBOURNE:- “In the last three months alone, ‘Stale Stock’ in Melbourne postcodes 3000-3207 has ballooned from 19,800 to 31,600,” Prosper Australia Campaign Manager David Collyer said today. ‘Stale Stock’ is property on the market for more than sixty days...

Lessons from Manhattan

photo credit: atomicshark“The devil is in the details.” German Proverb A fascinating paper on Manhattan real estate in the 1920-39 era shows why property went down, stayed down and didn’t recover in real terms until 1960. ‘Real Estate Prices During the Roaring...