"It's hard to understand the Victorian government these days".

None of us can ever understand lunatics. Victorian Labor must surely be an embarrassment to the ALP as a whole, and a decent federal leadership would have intervened long ago.

Disagree, Graham. It's time foreign investors flooding our domestic real estate market to hide or launder money were brought to book and discouraged. As must also apply to money for nothing investors, who may buy over a hundred houses? Paying just a minimal deposit and then have the tenant and the taxpayer/negative gearing pay off their investments for them.

Then shrug collective shoulders as most of our children and their children are priced out of the market/their rightful heritage.

It's not as if there were not plenty of other more profitable things they can invest lazy money in.

Our best minds and their better innovations would do more for the economy and Australia than forever pushing up an overheated real estate market!

And in so doing, create a bubble that has to burst sooner or later! And whinge like buggery for an outcome that was always on the cards in the world's most expensive housing market? All while real wages simply stagnate.

I hope all the other states follow suit, given a debt level that needs to be addressed and just not left entirely for the aforementioned.

Fair go, Graham, wadda ya reckon J.C. would say?
Alan B.

If someone doesn't build & rent the houses, where do you think people are going to live Alan. Personally I can't think of a worse investment than domestic rental.

From the renters point of view, it can'/t be too bad. A daughters friend has just sold her house as she was having big trouble meeting the payments & costs. She has moved into a brand new rental, as it is cheaper than owning her own.

Graham as you will be well aware, all Labor governments have so many promises both public & private to so many to buy votes, that they need huge tax income to pay off such debts. It always has been such, & will only get worse with the clowns running Labor today.

We really are in a dreadful place today, with one party you would have to be mad to vote for, & the other so bad you don't want to vote for them. It appears to be the same throughout the western world today.

I don't recall it being this bad in my younger days in the 60s, but perhaps I was just too young & naive to to see it.

Graham Young,
> The whole fandangle is a version of Marx's labour theory of value that imputes no value
> to the work of the entrepreneur, and delegitimises entrepreneurial effort on the basis it
> is achieved by exploiting someone else and is "unearned".

Not really, as there's no assumption of proportionality.

Surely it's more like a version of Ricardo's theory of Land Rent, that imputes no (or little) value to the work of the rentier, and instead (correctly) recognises that the value of the land depends mainly on what else is in the vicinity?

You say "There would be no profit in rezoning a property if there wasn't a mismatch between the zonings available and demand for product". That much is true, yet it doesn't necessarily equate to "poor planning decisions". Zoning changes are only one way of increasing the supply, and increasing the supply that way in the present limits your ability to do so in the future. Good planning recognises future needs as well as present needs.

Hasbeen, The sixties was a very different more egalitarian era, where a single income could buy a house, support a family and that annual holiday. And before we priced the housing market out of the reach of the disadvantaged, single mums and those poor and downtrodden through no fault of their own.

Parasitical, sitting on their collective asses, investors in the housing market, believe they have a right to earn all their income off of the bent backs and the brow sweat of those who pay the rent and the government subsidy, i.e., the taxpayer.

Shelter was at the referenced era, seen as a human right! And prices have been jacked up by ensuring supply never met demand so various entities could take a slice. Be it tax demanding governments with their maximised stamp duty or projected land tax or gavel bashing commission demanding agents.

But none worse than those who land bank, do SFA, then collect a bonanza with eventual rezoning.

I get you just don't give a rats for these priced out of a market through the parasitical greed of others wanting money for nothing from their fellow man!

It'd be different if we emulated much of Europe and put a fair and reasonable ceiling on rents and allowed tenants to become semi-permanent! And make sure that demand never outstrips supply. Moreover, put the infrastructure ahead of the development.

We stand alone as one of a few countries that allow negative gearing in the housing market when really it should apply to commercial investment, shares. Grow a conscience!
Alan B.

Adian. Land tax would be useful if it only applied to undeveloped rezoned urban land. And for every year left undeveloped, doubled. This would probably ensure demand never outstripped supply and put continuing downward pressure on house prices?

We have enough homeless people here already without placing yet another hurdle in their pathway to rehousing or homeownership. And those who through frugality etc. have clawed their way into humble homeownership, just don't need yet another revenue-raising impost placed on them, forcing them out and into the rental market or (nightmare) retirement homes.
Alan B.

And I draw your attention to Europe where the common practice is vastly longer-term leases and a fair rent commission. So no fair and reasonable apples for apples comparison.
Alan B.