The housing problem is not due to inflated expectations by home buyers, but to the inflated cost of the land the house sits on. Currently about 70% of the cost of a house/land package is just for the land, even though the median block size has shrunk

http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2014/03/construction-reform-will-not-drop-new-house-prices/

Big Nana or Rhian could buy a block of land, put up a wretched little shack on it, and pay almost as much as for a McMansion. Building costs haven't changed much in real terms over the past 30 or 40 years.

The real problems are due to government policy. The various layers of government have restricted supply by refusing to release land for housing, allowing developers to land bank (without punitive taxes), and refusing to implement decentralisation. As it is, people can't take advantage of the low land prices in country towns because there are very few jobs.

While restricting supply, the government has also increased demand by running one of the highest population growth rates in the developed world through its immigration policy. We are growing at 1.8% a year, enough to double the population in 38 and a half years. Our own fertility rate has been slightly below replacement level since 1976. While there is still some natural increase through demographic momentum, it only amounts to about 25% of the population growth. The rest is due to immigration (60%) and births to recent migrants. All the government charges on land are there because the politicians want to shift the cost of a lot of the infrastructure for the new residents onto them, rather than taking it out of general taxation on existing residents, which might provoke a revolt, as people see that they are paying a lot more while getting the same or less.

While there are distributional benefits for the folk at the top, there are no significant per capita economic benefits from the population growth, so there are no offsetting benefits for ordinary people

http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2014/05/oecd-lukewarm-on-benefits-of-immigration/

what we earn/we learned..to yearn for.
you over there you learn..or earn..[preferably min imum wage so you get so deep in credit card debt/you never will afford to buy a home/let alone a auto.]

there was an impulse..that we got for free
ie wasnt given to me/i recieved no inheritance/i own no shares/i hold no super..used to own my house till the kids mortgasuged it..andf speres put a lien on it...

anyhow im over it
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY!
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."

The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the
beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200
years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage." -- Alexander Tyler

I lived in a caravan park in order to save up for my first house which my parents were never fortunate enough to own. It was a modest 3 by 1. Today the expectation is far to high. I still see fast food joints packed. Once people sacrificed to get into a home while now many just whinge.

DEAR RUNNER/those days are gone..[i did the same]..when renting got too expensive..37 dollars wasted rent/everyweek..so we bough a 1200 dollar luxury van..and moved into the caravan park for two years as we paid it off and save deposit/got 25.000 'houising commision loan/fixed at ten percent/at a time when intrest was testing ever lower/but after the time of great highs/hose value/doubled..the second year..doubled again by thetime we sold..ten years later..when we bought a block for 65 grand built a 40 thousand dollar steel frame and brick/[well..i call it..a shed]..but from the outside it looks like home

point being mum lives in a mobile home thing..and these 'mobile homes rent out at 800 to the tourists/a weel..all the vans chased away long ago/toilert blocks and parks gone and now all theM MOBILE HOME thingies/no kid could afford to rent

anyhow day 1 of stike.back by slowing down paybing back
[vote none of the above.