‘We help property sellers sell’ is realestate.com.au’s proud claim. It is shocking to discover how far this News Corporation subsidiary is prepared to go to fullfil this promise.
An un-named writer penned a delightful upbeat article on their website based on research called the Housing Affordability Sentiment Index that realestate.com.au commissioned from mccrindle research.
QUOTE
‘Gen Y optimistic about housing future’
Our Housing Affordability Sentiment Index (HASI) report reveals that Generation Y are the most positive about housing affordability in Australia
Commissioned by realestate.com.au, the HASI report has found Gen Y are the most optimistic about housing affordability in Australia, with an index of 4.6 on the HASI scale.
Compared to the other generations, Gen Y are also the most optimistic about their financial futures, reporting the most significant demographic increase in household savings and income.
Despite facing a more fluid work environment (changing jobs more often, working at home or independently) that can in turn lead to fewer savings and less capacity to plan long term, younger Australians are confident they’ll attain their housing goals.
And they’re going about it in new ways.
A significant 72% of Gen Y respondents said they would consider purchasing a property with a friend or family member in order to enter the property market.
This is compared with less than 50% amongst other generations.
Critically, sharing as a pathway to purchase isn’t necessarily viewed as a compromise, but part of a change in attitudes toward property and ownership.
Collaborative consumption is a rising trend in Australia, and young people are particularly at home with a sharing economy that helps everybody win more in the long term.
Having watched their parents market unravel in the last five years thanks to the global financial crisis, Gen Y are going their own way, keen not to repeat the mistakes of the past, and innovating new ways to get what they want.
Older Australians were the most concerned overall about affordability and access.
END QUOTE
This is vile social engineering – manipulating innocent young adults locked out of property ownership by high land prices to regard buying property collectively as a culturally acceptable and financially appropriate option. It isn’t. These arrangements are notoriously unstable and destroy friendships. All partners are fully liable for all the debt should one fall short. And thin internal walls guarantee you will learn far too much about the private lives of the others.
So, the great and good are trying to convince Gen Y to co-own, just to squeeze a little more capitalization, a little more debt, our of this bone-dry market.
But wait! There’s free steak knives too!
That nasty, manipulative suggestion claims to be drawn from the mccrindle survey. An astute reader (thanks, Andy) has kindly sent me a copy. The report is, in fact, a soundly based and reasonably accurate snapshot of housing affordability in May 2011. There are, after all, practical limits to how far mccrindle research could sweeten findings and remain a member of the Australian Market & Social Research Society.
mccrindle’s Housing Affordability Thermometer sums the research up:
Rather than the sun-lit uplands of long wind-blown grasses suggested in realestate.com.au, the mccrindle research indexes all major states as having ‘Poor Affordability’. The outlier, by mccrindle’s measure, is Gen Y who somehow enjoy ‘Marginal Affordability’.
I will give everyone a moment to restore composure after inhaling the coffee you were foolishly drinking while reading this filth.
Gen Y are triple-burdened with education debt, compulsory superannuation and chronic job insecurity. Scratching together a deposit in any way proportionate to house prices is a herculean task. Many have simply abandoned home ownership as a life objective and regard themselves as economic failures.
Men and women of Australia! You are being lied to. The scale of this deceit is breathtaking. This material is part of a deliberate and concerted plan to capture your entire life’s free cash flow and thereby impoverish you forever.
Workers trapped by towering mortgages are very compliant employees. They work like Trojans, accept any humiliation, in desperate pursuit of pay rises to outgrow their poverty.
I love my fellow citizens and this institutionalised exploitation – class warfare – infuriates me. My gentle and honest advice: Don’t Buy Now!
Well said, David! Real estate advertising such as this is to vindicate the ‘art’ fashioned by Joseph Goebbels.
When is your predicted crash of 15% to 20% happening David? You promised it for this year and we only have about 55 days left.
Dear Reader, we welcome to this modest blog Peter Fraser, a QLD finance broker with whom I have repeatedly crossed swords at macrobusiness. Peter specialises in fact-lite commentary.
The timing of the bust depends on how long vendors are prepared to sit on properties they no longer want while the current ‘slow melt’ erodes their capital. The volume of this stock is staggering, SQM Research estimates there are 380,000 houses on the market nationwide. There are at least as many not publicly on the market but awaiting a sweet moment to exit.
Vendor discipline (refusing to cut their asking prices) has been magnificent – like the Light Brigade in the Crimean War.
Governments can continue supporting nominal prices with interest rate cuts for only so long. If current trends continue, rates will be at the zero bound in less than two years.
Why not have a look at the LVRG’s tracking of land prices to GDP for comfort: http://blog.lvrg.org.au/2012/11/australian-land-values-fall-again.html
I may have misread the moment of climax, but that doesn’t invalidate the argument current land prices are financial poison and will revert to mean in the immediate future – ‘immediate future’ being difficult to determine in a market as slow moving as land, subject to government interference and financier gaming.
Well Peter, seems mr Collyer is correct where we are, we’ve been viewing homes for the last few weeks to get a feel for the market, viewed one we were interested in advertised at $385000, the agent called a few hours later on the Saturday of the viewing to get our feelings, we told them it wasn’t worth more than $320000, low and behold Monday afternoon we got the agents ‘price drop’ email, not all the way down but fixed price $330,000! Since that’s happened we’ve kept looking with similar price drops noticed and properties still languishing on the market!!
Sign of things to come, all the stats in the world won’t help when potential buyers see this kind of discounting – it all becomes clear all is not well and after reading the information here and other non vested interest sites like bubblepedia we’ll be leaving our terms deposits firmly in place for at least another 2 years.
Worst case scenario – prices track sideways, best case for all involved, property returns to long term average and the over leveraged get a wake up call!