nimbies, real estate agents and land lords are running the show
everyone else, like 95% of the population, embraces house affordability
Let’s say that housing prices come down back in line with historic (pre-2000s) trends, as honestly - they damn well should; how do we not fuck over the millions of otherwise innocent owner-occupiers who suddenly find themselves severely underwater on their mortgages, due to no fault of their own?
This is the needle we need to thread as a nation, and it’s a bloody hard one.
We take those Stage 3 tax cuts that the wealthy gobbled up (leave the ones for the lower earners) and use them to pay off the banks.
Then write legislation to prevent this shit happening again.
It’s a good idea to start with, but flooding banks with that much money will likely have a massive down-side (think post-COVID19 levels of inflation), and it would be difficult to determine the right amount for each house, given that prices would still be in flux/freefall.
My initial thoughts were about providing income tax deductions for losses on primary residence (eg. If your $900K townhouse in the ‘burbs devalues to $400K, you can claim the $500K over however many years it’s take you), as long as you continue to service your mortgage, after the initial refinance to determine eligibility.
But I’m sure a tonne of people would be able to immediately spot loopholes or other reasons why my idea wouldn’t work either.
It’s not actually all that easy, unfortunately - otherwise you’d think we’d already have had a politician put forward a proposal by now.
This is the needle we need to thread as a nation, and it’s a bloody hard one.
It’s essentially impossible. We’ve been hearing “the housing bubble is going to burst” for what, 30 years now? It’s not going to burst because the government won’t let it, because if it did the entire country would be completely and utterly fucked because everything is tied up in property. There is no lowering of house prices by any significant amount in our future.
What we need is to cut red tape and ridiculous fees on new developments/builds to encourage building (especially on secondary dwellings/granny flats - there should be ZERO council fees to build a granny flat on your own property) to increase supply, drastically reduce migration temporarily to reduce demand, ban foreign investors - even temporarily, and get rid of the fucking ridiculous 5% deposit mortgages they just introduced.
That’s a few very easy things to do that would go a long way to getting things back under control. Prices won’t go down, but most of them will stop going up. Inner city/beachside/“exclusive” places etc are always going to go up in price because that’s where people want to be the most, and there is no more supply coming for those really.
Another thing that the government need to be doing is building some new big cities, and investing in existing ones to try and make people ok with moving 3 hours from Brisbane for example, because the city there is no longer just a single petrol station, a coles, and a bottle-o.
At the end of the day, if demand keeps outpacing supply at the ever increasing rate that it is now, there’s literally no fixing it.
And reduce the appeal of property as an investment.
Yes and no. There are a lot of owner-occupiers in Australia now who on paper are Millionaires, and they like being Millionaires. They are not going to like it if/when that status is stripped from them.
If houses nationally suddenly dropped in value by 50%, even if people’s mortgages were halved at the same time, I expect the change would still be met with hostility. It’s the unspoken truth of housing affordability: far too many Australians are happy with the present housing prices. They’re outnumbered by the rest of us, but they are a large enough voting block to decide any election.
They’re outnumbered by the rest of us, but they are a large enough voting block to decide any election.
If they’re outnumbered, how are they deciding the election?
Because the rest of us don’t have houses and aren’t set to lose half our net worth by such policy changes. So, we have a variety of election policies that we prioritise.
When Labor propose making changes to the status quo, even with mild changes, they have historically lost the election.
It might be different next time, but it’d be a huge political risk to propose changes again after previous rejections.
Unless you’re going to sell your house, it halving in value is irrelevant. In fact your primary place of residence halving in value would be an amazing thing for most people, as then they would be eligible for many handouts and subsidies that they currently wouldn’t be thanks to means testing. People wouldn’t have to sell their house to be able to afford in-home care (which is ironic).
Rates would also go down.
Because they are often wealthy, connected and have a voice, for example negative gearing. This only impacted a small percentage of people compared to the masses, but still made labor lose in a landslide to the liberal party in 2019
So they’re not outnumbered then, are they?
Because they own the media. Or they are the ones the media wants to please.
Seeing TV on the gym always make me wonder who the hell makes that content and who the hell is meant to consume it.
Are all the viewers real estate agents, house owners paying for renovation or people on yatch trips? I don’t see a single normal person on those shows.
I’m not old but do old people actually want expensive housing? All my friends (zoomers) just want houses to be cheaper. I literally could not care less if that would theoretically make me less wealthy. I just want to afford things
Unfortunately, it matters less what people want than what these people want
Of the 227 sitting MPs and senators, only 12 declared no property ownership.
Several senators are on the list, although we cannot be sure this provides an exhaustive picture because the property holdings of senators’ spouses are not published.
Some in this group declared a financial interest in trusts but were not required to disclose any property held in those trusts.
True but I still want to know if older people actually want expensive housing.
They want to sell their house to pay for the nursing home or leave it to their kids. They don’t want it to lose half its value.
Supply and demand. That’s it. That’s literally the main reason.
While there is more demand than there is supply, prices go up. When we keep bringing in even 1000 immigrants a day, demand keeps going up while supply isn’t increasing, so - you guessed it - prices go up.
Your opinion is very popular on reddit. You should check it out.
Even reddit gets things right occasionally I guess.
Do you think supply and demand isn’t what drives prices up, or do you not understand how supply and demand works?
I mean you’ll see more people resonating with your opinion there. Here you will be bashed. Potentially with good reasons.
I believe in supply and demand yes, and I don’t believe real estate follows that. It’s a game and those who know how to play and have better resources win.
As mentioned here, there is the COVID example. I don’t find your explanation credible. “People” (if I can use the term for those who benefited from the pandemic) didn’t get rich so quickly for your explanation to make sense.
What I do remember, not what I think, was people complaining everywhere that they couldn’t find workforce. I remember a lot of chaos that happened directly because the immigrants were gone.
Other than that, I’m not an “investor” and I would never be. So I can’t debate that. I do know that investors (I know quite a few of them) are the cancer of society and their death would directly benefit everyone, probably also solving the real estate issue and I would be able to buy a house since anyone wanting to profit from that would worry about being murdered.
That’s my personal opinion on the subject. After all investors are killed, then we can start checking if immigrants are a problem and try to solve it. But it’s probably a somewhat radical opinion.
@guismo
We have consistently built more dwellings than our population has grown for the last 10 years. Immigration is not the cause of the housing crisis, fiscal policy that rewards property speculation is.
Funny how people choose to ignore the actual facts because they want to point the finger at migrants. It’s almost as if they’re looking for a justification for their racism.
@FreedomAdvocateI didn’t say that. I said that after all investors are dead, then we can start looking into immigration. But it’s quite possible that the real estate issue would be solved and I would have a house and we would find out that immigration was not a problem.
Is it important for you that people who currently invest die, or that the seizing of properties doesn’t work anymore?
It’s kind of a joke. Their behaviour is predatory and in a decent society that would not be allowed.
I think profit from real estate should be illegal. At the very least from the land you bought. Not sure about what was constructed. But probably not either.
No one should be allowed to sell a land for more than they paid, considering inflation, etc. No one should be allowed to get land to profit. You may b profit from the use of the land maybe, but NEVER from the land itself, be it renting, selling, whatever. Land is not a product you make. It’s limited and existed before you.
@guismo
Yeah, I was talking about old mate @FreedomAdvocate
And your rationale for huge growth during COVID when there was little no to immigration?
They don’t have a good one. Trust me.
Free money being handed out in the billions, and yes - supply and demand. A lot of people got very rich during covid, and a lot of people took advantage of those that could no longer afford their houses so had to sell them. More people were wanting to buy than were selling, and lots of them were in desirable areas where previously houses weren’t really available. About 6 houses in my street who all bought their house and land for ~$300k sold for over a million during COVID to cashed up out of state-ers, and prices just kept going up and up as more put their houses up for sale to cash in, with massive bidding wars. More demand than supply does that.
There was a redistribution of wealth towards the extremely rich, not sure why we’re blaming that on immigrants. Do you have any resources about the rest of your points?
not sure why we’re blaming that on immigrants
Where did anyone do that?
Do you have any resources about the rest of your points?
Are you arguing that prices went up because demand…dropped? Or what do you think the cause was? House sales went through the roof.
It’s always people with fuckass usernames like “TruePatriot” saying shit like this. Like okay bro we get it you’re trying really hard to be cool and taken seriously.
Cool story.
Do you disagree with the principles of supply and demand?
Wah
You said I’m trying really hard to be cool and taken seriously but it seems like that’s you at the moment. Do you disagree with the principles of supply and demand, or do you not actually disagree with my comment and you just wanted to try and look cool?
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