If the Grattan thimkers wanted to reignite prosperity and national competitiveness, they would look at the cost of land – for Rural, Manufacturing and Services, for business and for workers alike. Inexpensive land de-risks all economic activity. We have been bloody fools to abandon this vital natural advantage to the ticket –clippers.
The price of allowing FHBs to access superannuation creates some real winners: existing landowners, banks and the handful of buyers able to buy before the land-price jaws inevitably snap shut again. Everyone else loses – now and in retirement.
Australia has blown a land bubble of immense size. This troubling reality has finally come to the attention of the Senate and obliged it to examine the matter. Prosper Australia’s submission to the Senate Housing Affordability inquiry examines nine key economic…
In an extraordinary outburst, the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute has today embraced planning constraints on urban subdivision, elevating ‘developer certainty’ over the risk – heaven forbid! – of oversupply. I kid you not. “While it is almost…
Victorian Planning Minister Matthew Guy has been out this week energetically pointing to fresh ‘land releases’ around Melbourne. Growth, or the illusion of growth, is a powerful sedative that buys contentment and political support. He will bang this drum hard.…
The weighted net annual rate of return on land investment in Melbourne 1880-92 was a remarkably high 34.6 per cent, peaking at 78.3 per cent in 1887, according to a fascinating paper researcher Philip Soos has unearthed Rates…
Alan Kohler is out this morning on Business Spectator with a big swipe at Conservative state governments. Yes, that is conservative with a capital ‘C’. He sees at last the destruction the cost of land is wreaking from Port Hedland…
The Productivity Commission is out with a major study that recommends ending Stamp Duty on conveyances in favor of a land value tax to avoid trapping people in their homes when better jobs beckon elsewhere. The Geographic Labor Mobility report…
AHURI published Friday an important new research paper ‘The edges of home ownership’ about churn in the property market that deserves our close scrutiny and debate. Wood, Ong et al compare the UK and Australian experience of those leaving and…
The ANZ property economics team is out in the AFR today with a bold prediction of a rise in house prices. ANZ’s David Cannington is one of the most clear-eyed economists in Australian property and this forecast must be taken…