Karl Fitzgerald

Karl Fitzgerald

Karl Fitzgerald was the former Director of Research at Prosper Australia for 18 years. He now leads Grounded Community Land Trust Advocacy.

Property Bubble leads to crash landing

by Bryan Kavanagh As featured in today’s Business Age, 28/03/08 WHEN it mattered, the US Federal Reserve, US banks and rating agencies failed the risk-management test — in much the same way that Australia is now failing it. This is…

Out of Reach – housing forum

Last night saw SBS’s excellent Insight program tackle housing affordability under the title Out of Reach. Over 270 comments have been posted since the event, giving warrant to the excellent comparing host Jenny Brockie does each week. As probably the…

Brumby Delivers Free Lunch

The front cover of today’s Herald Sun has a huge photo of Horse Stud owner Steve Spiteri (looking hard done by!) with a caption: ‘Thanks Premier: Steve Hits Paydirt’. Yesterday’s announcement to rezone all land residential within Melbourne’s 2030 boundary…

Brumby sprawls on affordability

Prosper Australia today applauded the State Government’s announcement for taking housing affordability more seriously. However, questions must be asked about who benefits most from this announcement. “Today’s declaration of residential zoning has made Victoria’s land bankers more money in a…

Land Supply controlled by Land Bankers

Below we can see 2 examples of former Commonwealth land being released ‘to the market’. Snapped up by a developer in Melbourne’s most impoverished neighbourhood (Braybrook), such large ‘land banks’ are manipulated to drip feed houses to the markets so…