"I don't see anything wrong with this", says the author of this piece. Well neither do I. So why write it? Beats me. It seems an attempt to demonise investors, financiers, regulators, even public preferences for their accommodation. But I have never met a developer who invested when there was no prospect of a sale, or a financier who didn't wish to get her money back. Regulators are another matter. They have a role in safety and perhaps protecting community standards but otherwise keep them out of the loop. If dwelling construction was decided by public officials rather than the market, catastrophe would follow as night follows day.

I live in one of those large developments, though in a 3 bed unit. I don't know how one gets figures on the number that are unlet or locked up. It's a strange thing to do , since the levies are high, and the returns from letting are very good. The retun on those small units is well above average rental returns on capital. I have never heard of a unit in out complex failing to be let almost immediately ti becomes vacant. The fact is that many young couples who are both earning good money find it very convenient while they save for a deposit on emoh ruo.

Exactly!
Rhrosty.

While young people are marrying later, & staying childless longer, these units can have a place. However a problem develops if a couple, both with cars share such apartments, with only a single car space. They really only work in the inner city, with sedentary type tenants.

It is also happening out on the "burbs" now, with the tendency for McMansions to be squeezed into half pint lots. A friend in such an area now about 10 years old has a huge parking problem. Garages are full of junk as usual, & the couple of kids, school kids when the parents built, are now car owners. The once trendy area is looking like a used car lot, with cars parking wherever they can be shoved.

With even newer developments blocks are so small I doubt a pregnant lady could pass between the house & the side fence.

In my opinion, town planners are the most incompetent, misguided people in the country.

The UK fits 62 million people into an area the size of Victoria with only 13 per cent of its population in its major city, London. That’s what we ought to work towards.

Governments need a bipartisan program to change Victoria’s settlement pattern to one like that of the UK – a spread of population among our provincial cities, not 70 per cent of the population squashed into one city, Melbourne, whose urban area covers not much more than one per cent of the state.

Pushing land prices up in Melbourne would encourage people to move to other parts of the state, which is the policy aim we need, as long as those parts are connected to Melbourne by good transport links. All we need to do to accommodate the supposedly inevitable four million extra Melburnians over the next 40 years is rezone an area the size of one per cent of the state around existing provincial towns and cities. That would leave 98 per cent of the state unaffected by the four million.

We don’t need higher density throughout our existing suburbs. That would defeat the purpose of an urban growth boundary and provincial city growth. Higher density residential areas do not double the number of trams, the capacity of the rail network, the size of the local school playground, the size of the local park, the number of beds in the hospital, the diameter of the sewage pipe, etc. Higher density should be provided in select areas to meet the needs of those who want it. It should not be used to destroy Melbourne’s suburban amenity.

It seems beyond the wit of our governments and planners to use zoning and market forces to limit the population growth of Melbourne. They are stuck in fatalistic passivity, diverting public debate to arguments a $1million-per-metre road that we would not need if population were not exploding.

There is more in my posts at:
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/theurbanist/2010/10/20/what-should-we-do-about-melbourne/.

Nothing more then Dog boxes
Reason most people live in units is because they cant afford proper housing
Units are no good for families or for society as a whole
1 unit 1 owner no investments at all drive prices down so everyone doesn't have to pay exorbitant rents to a greedy investors
Who in there right mind thinks its ok for some people to own 10 houses and others cant afford 1 it stinks of a rich mans game

Careful there Chris, your communistic streak is showing. The last thing we need is idiots in an office with planning department on the door. I have yet to see them get even a single thing right.

The UK population is spread because of it's piddle little counties, with tens of thousands of bureaucrats in each. They are doing things like checking peoples garbage to see it is in the right bin, or that the bin was not put out too early. They even have spies sneaking around checking what TV station people are watching. Russia never got so bad. The rest of the population is there to cater to them at work & play.

Their ridiculous bureaucracy is sending them broke, it is when, not if their system fails completely.

The simple answer is stop immigration of any sort, & let anyone who wants to subdivide the land they have title to, to do so.

The only other requirement is to sack all dictatorial bureaucrats, who think they know what everyone should do, i.e. the planners. Of course a few hundred thousand pen pushers from the bureaucracy & academic sector would be more use to the public on the dole, where they could do less damage.

There has been a huge outbreak of these developments here in Perth. We quite often get visitors from the east come to visit, guess where they stay? I drive up Hay street on Sunday morning and what do I see? Loads of people with bags waiting for a bus or taxi. A large number of the CBD units are being used as short stay apartments managed by? The Perth City council has woken to this, but is not sure what to do about it. It isn't illegal to rent your apartment, and it brings people into the city. Only problem is everything shuts at five, and anything which stays open afterwards is overpriced and not going to attract the budget conscious who rent the apartments.

>Let anyone divide the land they have title to to do so<

Always providing the intending developer, supplies and installs the necessary infrastructure; and is not at the end of an already clogged arterial roadway.

Look, critical minutes count when someone is having a heart attack or a stroke.

I have to agree with Chis; and it really is time we started catering to the common folk, and not to the do nothing developers.

But particularly those who buy rural land on the edge of town then slice off pieces of it.

If they paid $10.00 an acre, how can they justify $10,000.00 an acre, just because they threw fences around 5 acre chunks of it! Alongside an existing road, and as battle axe blocks to maximize the return!

Subdivide and be dammed, until all we have left are postage stamp size blocks surrounded by a vast empty inland!

We need to thoroughly decentralize and return the notion of a fair go!

Until now, we invariably created a world where the next generation were better off than those who preceded them!

This is the first generation that has gotten that in reverse, and arguably just because some extraordinarily greedy old men, really do believe the world owes them a living.

And I'd follow Canada, and simply prohibit non resident foreigners from buying any real estate!

And I like the NZ example that only allowed third generation Kiwis to buy farmland!

What do we gain if we force the price of land so high, we can only ever aspire to become tenants in our own land; which by the way Has, is the communist example!
Rhrosty.

Rhrosty our present zoning laws are nothing but a rort, overseen by a bunch of town planning twits, all brainwashed by the same academic process in our universities. They want to make Oz a huge Copenhagen, full of bicycle riding peasants.

I live on 20 acres, 25 kilometres from 6 different towns, right in the middle of nowhere. Although it is riverfront, with an irrigation licence, it is commercially worthless, & was quite cheap. I bought it so the kids could have their horses economically. Today I have one old horse wandering around it.

Two of my kids would like to live here, with their wives, have their horses, & raise their families. Due to the bureaucratic stupidity of planners, I am not allowed to split off a block for either or each of them. At the same time I am not allowed to have even a second dwelling on the property.

This despite the fact that one kilometre away, 300 acres is subdivided into 1.25 acre blocks, & just 7 Kilometres away a 50,000 satellite city, Yarrabilba, is being developed with those ridiculous postage stamp size lots. Our planners are happy, [or well paid] to approve a slum in the making, but not some decentralised living.

It would be nice to believe any of this was good town planning, however it appears like a good way for councillors & town planners to share in the spoils, & guarantee their benefactors that they will face no competition, from little people splitting off a block or two.

Hasbeen,

Accusing a former state vice president of the DLP of having a “communistic streak” because he does not support squashing people up is just weird.

Claiming that the population spread in the UK is the result of the existence of counties is also weird.

Rhrosty,

I don’t know which state you are in, but it is not possible in Victoria to buy rural land and just subdivide it. We have had an urban growth boundary, with a clear distinction between rural and urban land, since 1971. The boundary has been extended several times, but the concept is clear.

We had the option in the 1960s of making Melton, Whittlesea, Lilydale, Hastings and a few other places cities separate from Melbourne, but we did not do so. We can do the same thing today with population centres further away from Melbourne.

Chris I consider it communistic to try to force people to live where they don't want to live, with draconian policies. We would not have the high prices we now have if governments were not profiteering on land development.

In a democracy government should make the things they want more attractive, not try to coerce people by making others too expensive. Don't forget, even if Melbourne is over crowded, you still have to have check out chicks & truck drivers able to live in the place for it to work.

If you want an area developed, just open subdivision, without a huge government take, or idiot planning restrictions, then stand back, or you'll be killed in the rush.

When we have planners telling people they can't have windows facing the view, because the sun will come in, it really is time to line the planners up against a wall in front of a firing squad. That sort of attitude is also communistic in the extreme.

The article makes limited economic and no social sense. Maybe our mild climate makes us forget that shelter is a human need and should not be a get rich scheme for speculators. The only justifiable reason for investors in real estate is if it actually increases supply and decreases prices. This has patently not happened. How about we take speculation completely out of realestate altogether?

How does it benefit society if people take massive mortgages just to pay for a roof over their head instead of spending their money on job creating consumption like eating out or heaven forbit something productive like a business?
The real estate mania has done enormous damage to our society.

dane; you've absolutely nailed it in one!

Has; have you applied to construct inlaw accommodation? Which is still permissible?

And I understand if your land is a cultivated paddock, you may be automatically allowed to construct a second dwelling; which could possibly be a duplex?

In any event, given the land, the water and all the nearby developments, 20 acres would make a fine and profitable market garden or an even better site for glasshouse intensive and unseasonable production; with a ready made local market and some of who would drive by just to buy a fresh picked cabbage or salad greens/what have you, from the farm gate.

As I understand the law you are entitled to sell from your land, anything you can grow on it; except eggs?

Moreover, hawkers licence would allow you or your kids to sell any produce you grow from the back of a truck; which you'd need in any event, just to move surplus produce!

Water and water melons seem to go together, and with minimal effort! And there's your cultivated paddock!

And if your kids really do want to live there, then they could put some of their money and time in developing it, and indeed, living in caravans while they do that?

Although that might require them to get their hands dirty and hardened with work, and the usual dawn to dark gut-bust, that so marks primary production!

And have you applied for a village development; which might allow one acre blocks as development; always providing there is no danger of flooding?

Another approach could be an application for a caravan park; which could establish a cash flow, and make a later high density urban rezoning application likely successful? A successful D.A., would ensure that development funding would follow!?

As some have noted, there is more than one way to skin a cat! And I understand your desire to leave something of value for the kids; and the frustration of being prevented!
Rhrosty.

Rhrosty when I said commercially worthless I meant it. Much of it is light sandy loam which has been flogged as a turf farm. It was not even successful at that. Very light grazing is all it can handle. One beast to about 6 acres in a good season, less in a poor one.

We have had a few people try market gardening around here, on the pick of the river flats, not my rubbish. They all went broke, even including a couple of incredibly hard working Vietnamese families. Another spent a fortune on a hydroponics set up. He was wiped out by a couple of severe frosts. We usually get a couple of -5C each year.

I learnt years ago that growing any sort of food is a mugs game, & would not recommend it to my worst enemy.

The river is just not reliable enough to depend on for earning an income. I have used it to grow some soil improvement crops, & to establish pasture, but that is all the place is good for.