Speculative land rationing our opportunity
Monday, January 21st, 2008Property lobby pushes all the usual red herrings whilst ignoring the speculative causes to affordability pressures.
Demographia International’s new report on housing affordability again pushes the “unending sprawl forever” mantra. Report author Wendell Cox rolled out all the usual criticisms of land rationing, infrastructure charges and bureaucratic tape.
“The effect of unending sprawl is to stretch government finance such that public infrastructure suffers throughout the city. The resultant doughnut development sees slum pockets develop throughout the city, breeding crime” stated Bryan Kavanagh from the Land Values Research Group.
“Cities that may have affordable land on the fringes suffer greatly from a lack of services that every respectable community deserves. Few of the leading cities in the Demographia survey rate well in the World’s Most Livable Cities indices for a reason” claimed Mr Kavanagh.
Of concern is the fact that ‘land banking’ is never mentioned in any property think tank related report. The heavily criticised ‘land supply’ issue is a diversionary tactic from the large tracts of vacant land that speculators have accumulated. Speculative vacancies act to enforce scarcity and push up land prices.
(more…)