Housing as an investment is what went wrong - we told a fucktonne of rich cunts that a return is a right when dealing with property, and so the moment interest rates rose, they forced us tenants to eat their loss. Guarantee you if and when interest rates drop again, they won’t pass on the savings though.
Yup. There are a whole raft of different factors at play that are the reason it came to a head now (construction difficulties, restrictive zoning laws, the rise of Airbnb, increasing numbers of people moving out/splitting up during COVID, etc.), but the underlying cause of the problem is the fact that housing is treated by our government as an investment vehicle.
It’s okay, IMO, if people want to invest in housing. I’m not one of the people claiming that owning an investment property should be banned. However, the ability to make a profit off of that investment needs to be secondary to the primary purpose of housing…giving people a safe and secure place to live.
I find this to be a rather poor article, to be honest. It mentions the need to construct more housing, but makes no mention of the problems that caused that to be the case (it suggests “low rate of borrowing”, but doesn’t mention supply difficulties in the construction industry, or the restrictive low-density zoning laws). The only mention of anything related to investment is around the idea that we need more of it, not the problem that is treating housing as an investment in the first place (which is itself the reason governments are reluctant to allow huge amounts of construction…or build way more public housing). Honestly, it feels like it was co-written by the Property Council.
I think a change that’s very easy to make, will have some impact, and would draw far less pushback than more extreme measures would be to have landlords forced to report all of their costs, earnings and capital gains related to their property either directly to the tenant(s) or on a publicly accessible register on a regular basis. Prospective tenants would be armed with more information and would be able to know if their landlords are bullshitting with related to costs. Companies could create lists where they rank landlords based on how much profit they leech from their tenants. People would be able to know if they’re renting from someone who owns one additional property or fifty-three.
It won’t make a massive difference, but it’s a low-cost and fairly easily implementable measure that could be taken as part of a broader suite of measures.
Everything’s going according to plan from the point of view of the people who matter.
At this point is there any other western nation with cheaper rents?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Nationally, only 39 per cent of properties advertised for rent on realestate.com.au between July-December 2023 met that definition of affordable for the median, or middle, income household earning $111,000 a year.
“The deterioration in affordability has been driven by the significant increase in rents that we’ve seen since the pandemic, which wages have not kept pace with,” observed PropTrack senior economist Angus Moore.
The report notes that a large part of this trend has been due to the increased popularity of traditionally cheaper regional and smaller metropolitan city markets since the pandemic started.
On the other end of the spectrum, New South Wales has regained its dubious honour of being the most expensive place in the country to live, particularly in Sydney where the median weekly rent is $750 for a house and $680 for a unit.
The report comes a day after Luci Ellis, Westpac Group chief economist (and former assistant Reserve Bank governor), said the RBA would have concerns about the state of the housing market right now.
“The issue at present is the low rate of new production of housing in the context of high construction costs and ongoing (if more moderate) population growth,” Ms Ellis said on Friday.
The original article contains 910 words, the summary contains 202 words. Saved 78%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
International student intake as a ratio of housing supply is the main issue. If dwellings were being built at the same rate of international student intake, then affordability or vacancy would not be a problem.
Look up your local universities (they’re all non-profit organisations with financials reported in the ACNC) and realise just how much their business model has become funded by international students. Here’s a few examples:
University of Melbourne: 69% of tuition fee revenues comes from intl students
University of Queensland: 70% of tuition fee revenues comes from intl studentsThe universities also receive government funding, pay no income tax (because they are “nonprofit”), and don’t need to contribute anything to the housing problem that they are feeding. It’s time for them to help carry the burden - they should either provide housing or help pay for it.
