MELBOURNE:- Very poor residential land sales have prompted fresh pleading for the construction industry by the Housing Industry Association today in ‘Land Sales Signal Slow Home Building Recovery’ as new home buyers remain unwilling to commit at current high land...
BLOG: housing
Written Off: Negative Gearing
Tuesday Oct 2nd, 6.30pm 1/27 Hardware La, Melbourne Presenter: Philip Soos RSVP $5 entry Does Negative Gearing increase rental supply? Is it a path to wealth or a black hole? Download the full report (PDF) Philip Soos has assembled an extensive array of data to...
Telling the RBA like it is
Reprinted from On Line Opinion 6 Sept 2012 The apathy of economists about the costs and burdens imposed upon modest citizens is staggering, as though this is their natural lot and there is nothing to be done. Housing is a perfect example. We see young adults rejecting...
House prices stagnate
The ABS Eight Capital Cities House Price Indexes 6416.0 released today shows the property market is totally stagnant with prices unmoved, says Prosper Australia. “Property spruikers calling ‘Bottom!’ based on this data - and they will be – are misleading homebuyers....
Speculative Vacancies in Melbourne Report: 2012
20 June 2012 There are 90,700 vacant houses in Melbourne - 5.9 per cent of the total - according to Earthsharing Australia's 5th annual Speculative Vacancies Report. "Our lazy land use makes a mockery of the drive for affordable housing," researcher Philip Soos said...
Weak Construction gets Weaker
Dwelling construction continues to fall, according to the AIG-HIA Performance of Construction Index for May. Commercial construction and house building activity weakened to 34.7, where anything below 50.0 represents contraction. In parallel, the ABS Building Approvals...
Land Rent = Job Creation
A nifty clip from our South African colleagues Karen Cooper and Peter Meakin. Of note is their useful method comparing 300Rd p/m in land rent to the 60,000Rd we currently pay to banksters.
Muck in Marrickville
Today's Sydney Morning Herald has a breathless article about a flipper couple who bought, renovated and have for sale a Marrickville terrace. The underlying message: there’s profit in the renovation game. My back-of-envelope calculations based on the article’s figures...
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...
Nine Quarters of Weak Land Sales
Australia has experienced nine quarters of falling land sales volumes with the last five quarters flatlining forty per cent below long term averages. The big falls in prices we have been predicting are now a certainty.