BLOG: affordability

Five reasons First Home Buyers should stand aside

The Don’t Buy Now! campaign urges the landless not to buy real estate until prices reset, just as they have in the countries we compare ourselves to. Property is grossly over valued measured against earnings or the rental income it can generate. This means young...

Broadacre Land Prices To Fall Hard

13 June 2012 Victoria Planning Minister Matthew Guy has made big land price falls on Melbourne's outskirts a certainty with his extension of the metropolitan boundary by around 7000 hectares. "The gaping chasm between developer supply and buyer demand has never been...

Psst! Stamp duty can be avoided

As the Fairfax papers reported on April 14, the NSW government has rejected yet another recommendation to replace conveyancing stamp duty by a broad-based land tax. That is the effect of the "stamp duty replacement tax" recommended on page 13-4 of the Lambert...

House Price Bust: Why Talk of a Bubble Won’t Wash

Philip Soos notes eight of the nine substantial property price increases over the last 131 years have resulted in a decline. He can’t see why the largest increase on record would not precede another drop now. Soos does not buy the argument that Australia is suffering from a “chronic housing shortage”, saying property prices have continually experienced boom-bust cycles regardless of population growth.

Land price too high

From the Canberra Times 5 April 2012. Your article “Capital’s housing prices highest in the country” (April 3, p1) was missing one very important word – land. As we move toward Canberra’s centenary celebrations it is time to reflect on the great wedge that is driving...

Now Everyone Hates Stamp Duty

On Monday the Real Estate Institute of Victoria made public its submission to the Victorian Government on the framing of the state budget. They are big-hearted enough to call for an end to the First Home Bonus – a ‘gift’ to buyers that merely inflates land prices by...