Concerns continue to grow in China where the value of land sales are down 38% y.o.y and VOLUME down 45% according to Market Watch: Total land sales fell to 1,767 transactions in May in 300 Chinese cities, down 45% from a…
The good data provided by the ABS boosts buyer confidence and actually lifts land prices. Their absence after the Abbott Government’s cost-cutting can only reduce them. This may even be the pin that pops the land bubble.
The latest edition of Progress – our 1111th – is now available on-line (PDF) * Prosper’s submission to the Senate inquiry into Affordable Housing * Financial Rules for Constructing a Strong State by Fred Harrison * It’s Time to Shift States…
Monbiot chronicles the shrieking retorts to reforms challenging their unearned incomes. Tax reform can no longer be dismissed as a dirty word left to the well connected. Here in Australia such shrieking to the mining tax, pokie or taxi license reforms was…
The Victorian State Council of The Greens updated their Finance and Taxation policies last weekend. Normally, I find their soft-left-populist stances mind boggling. Their tax polices, however, deserve attention – and applause. On gambling, The Greens stepped past…
The second in our new Evolving economics enews – sent bi-weekly. Sign up here. Read below for the surprising rationale justifying foreign investment in Cuba’s newly privatised property free-for-all. Having trouble reading this newsletter? View it online. The enews of Prosper & Earthsharing…
With the Federal Budget to be handed down in a matter of hours, and with today’s housing finance figures revealing more of the same: investors at 39.1% of all loans FHO’s nationally plateauing at 12.6%, up 0.1% NSW FHO’s at…
There is a better revenue base available to Victoria today: State Land Tax. Just remove its exemptions, thresholds and wheezes and consign Stamp Duty to the scrapheap. That SLT has deadweight losses of nil, so no wasted lives or people trapped in and out of housing.
We were warned of the dangers of the wealthy advising on future budgetary levers. But we thought more of the BCA’s Tony Shepherd than this shallow display for vested interests. With great fanfare we are to maintain the Australian way of…
The unfolding ICAC investigation in NSW is set to reveal the tight network between property developers and the political process. Neil Chenoweth, lead investigative journalist at the Fin Review has written this extraordinary piece, outlining just how effective counsel Geoffrey…