BLOG: housing affordability

Land: A Key Natural Advantage

If the RBA and our economic mandarins observe a national strategic advantage they have an obligation to foster it and deploy it to the advantage of all. One of ours is space. We have chosen to welcome migration, dig up minerals, grow crops and animals – but also to strictly ration by price the access to land for young adults.

No Land for You, Melbourne

The Napthine government is determined to limit land supply and thereby further increase the cost of land for all in Melbourne.

The price of freshly subdivided land on the outskirts of cities reverberates and amplifies all the way to their centre. Constricting supply has profound implications.

Higher GST ignores housing, inequity

Higher GST ignores housing, inequity

Press Release The Abbott government must rebuild State relationships by assisting in the educative process of tax reform. “The outsourcing of deficit pressures by Treasurer Joe Hockey has accelerated the need for state revenue reforms” stated Prosper Australia...

REIWA: Abolish Stamp Duty for State Land Tax

Yesterday REIWA president David Airey issued a call in the West Australian newspaper for the WA government to abandon Stamp Duty and fund this by removing the many wheezes from the tattered State Land Tax.  Hooray! Airey says: “It’s time to recognise that stamp duty...

HIA: Negative Gearing barely costs economy

An interview on Lateline Business with Harley Dale (HIA) and Saul Eslake makes for interesting viewing on whether Negative Gearing will be grandfathered and quarantined to new housing only in the upcoming May budget. At about the 10 minute mark Harley Dale makes an...

Australia’s Magic Pudding

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.