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 and unsold. Gardens have been primped, interiors polished up, advertisements run, open for inspections attended, auctions conducted and … no sale!
Hardest hit are the first home buyer hunting grounds in Melbourne’s west with over 5,600 brand new houses stale and more being added daily: Derrimut, Werribee, Point Cook (postcode 3030, stale 2650), Tarneit, Truganina, Hoppers Crossing (postcode 3029, stale 1932), Roxburgh Park and Craigieburn (postcode 3064, stale 1095).
“To give these figures perspective, only 564 Point Cook properties sold in all last year,” Collyer said. “This overhang is massive.
“Developers miscalculated. They built way ahead of buyers and have now come to a grinding halt. This points to abrupt and widespread unemployment in the construction trades as projects are completed and workers laid off.
The ‘Stale Stock’ figure has been collated by Prosper Australia from data published by SQM Research. It points directly at a major correction as the supply and demand equation is restored by downward price movement right across Melbourne.
“While property spruikers still maintain their lie that all is well in the housing market, the evidence is firmly against them.
“By each and every metric, house prices are severely overvalued. First home buyers are now excluded by towering prices from joining this Ponzi scheme. Without their fresh money, prices must fall.
“Developers can afford to sit on these just-built properties for as long as they wish as they pay only $375 pa in state land tax on a $300,000 block of land.
“We need root and branch tax reform that lifts the burden from wages and business and places it firmly on economic rents: the original Resource Super Profits Tax and a federal Land Value Tax. Two new revenue sources would pay for the repeal of 125 vile and behaviour distorting taxes that shrink our lives and diminish our future.
“The Henry Tax Review points the way to a future of prosperity and opportunity. Nothing less will correct our malaise,” Collyer concluded. ENDS
This exactly what happened in Ireland and now they are stuck with big ghost estates where nobody lives and hundreds of tradies are out of work and are being forced to move overseas.
Yes Beruika, many good men will be put out of work and many that will not be seen. Out of work people cannot buy all the need or want. The effect is enormous in its flow on problems.
But why do we suffer this system from hell? We all come into this world with hands and a brain to guide them. Work is what produces all we have. Why is it that workers are out of work? Governments have a lot to answer for for it is a governemnt invented system that rules us. The price of homes is but one symptom of a rotten, corrupt system. The Prosper organisation has a few of the answers.
Perhaps they are worth a closer look!
As Collyer says, the owners “can afford to sit on these just-built properties for as long as they wish”. A higher holding charge on land values would indeed encourage owners to sell or let. It would also prevent future price bubbles from forming.
We can be sure that the finance/real-estate complex is furiously lobbying for another stimulus package, to prop up home prices and prevent recent borrowers from falling into negative equity. But another First Home Owners’ Boost is clearly unacceptable; if it “worked”, it would do so by blowing a new bubble, pricing more buyers out of the market and setting up an even bigger crash.
Can these demands be reconciled? Failing that, can we purge the bad debts and restart economic growth?
Here’s my attempt: http://blog.lvrg.org.au/2011/07/opting-out-of-income-tax-gst.html .
They can afford to sit on vacant blocks and “just developed” sites because the Councils waives their rates. It would be more effective if they rated an the land value. A very simple system. The land is already valued by the State governments and all that is necessary is to apply a rate.
Your system seems terribly complicated Gavin.