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…
Sharemarket-listed property developers hold 264,000 residential lots in their development pipeline – 19.3 years supply with a disclosed end value of $80 billion – in a year when they sold only 13,000 lots, according to analysis by Prosper Australia. The…
The Victorian government today released its metropolitan planning strategy Plan Melbourne at an industry seminar in the Melbourne convention centre. It puts in place the preconditions for a city that is: • Economically divided • Highly livable for those with…
Places Victoria, a government agency that once competed with private land developers to limit their pricing power, is to sell all its remaining land holdings on Melbourne’s outskirts to a single buyer, the AFR reports today. Rebecca Thistleton has Places…
Land in Australia should be dirt cheap. Outstanding access to land ought be a national advantage, generously conferred by a loving government upon its people.