Well,

Many thanks to treasury_broadside, not least of all for introducing something new here.
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wizofaus, daggett et al.

As you may already be aware. it would be safe to say at this stage of the thread that you are being subject to monumental wind-up.

There is nothing left here that hasn't already been exhausted & recycled.

Your contributions have become prompts that are patronised with abstract, self-serving, home-spun homilies that would be pretty much the same regardless of what you said or anything else that has been said in the entire 32 pages of this thread.

For example:

"with modern day finance, anyone can buy a home"

"they just get off their butts and help themselves"

"every day battlers who don’t whinge and complain, but get on with life and make the best of what they have"

"Its simply supply and demand" (Jesus H!)

" Those that are prepared to lower their standards and make other sacrifices will eventually get to where they want to be "
etc. etc.
________

You can't argue with observations like these. You're not really meant to.

These assertions don't concern themselves with specific historical context, consistent quantified comparisons or any other such notion. They are a mockery of method & purpose.

Some the ‘points’ that you have countered on the last 2 pages can probably be found on the first 2 or 3 or 4…

These ‘points’ don’t respond to yours. They simply wait for a shuffling of context & an opportunity to be reasserted. This amnesiac loop frustrates & disrupts the linear progress of the discussion.
Which may or may not be its purpose, I don’t really know.

For example (just 1 example):
“There has been vast immigration AND vast migration to the cities since then, and this all drives up demand” etc.

You know (& they know) that population can’t account for a 150-200% price increase in a few years, its already been done to death & as such – no, there is probably no point in responding. Not seriously.

That is entirely your choice of course.

-Mr Smith

Country Gal, where do you get the idea I believe that "more intensive housing" is not desirable? Australia's cities are among the most least dense in the world. We could double the density of them (i.e. another 8 or 9 million people, with no need for more land) without them even coming close to approaching the density of New York (or London or Paris). To suggest that the choice is between NY-style apartments and 5-Br McMansions on 1/4 acre blocks is absurd, but as it is, in many suburbs here, not even "NY-style" apartments are affordable (of course, they're not very affordable in Manhattan either, but do you don't have to move that far away from Manhattan for reasonably affordable housing).
Now here I agree that government regulations preventing denser housing is a problem, and I would very much support seeing those regulations loosened. But I don't think it's the major part of the problem, given the scale of the price increase relative to the population increase, especially in the last 6 or 7 years.

Mr Smith,

You were spot on when you wrote: "These 'points' don't respond to yours. They simply wait for a shuffling of context & an opportunity to be reasserted. This amnesiac loop frustrates & disrupts the linear progress of the discussion."

---

However, I do differ with your apparent view that immigration-driven demand is not the major driver of housing hyper-inflation.

Of course there are other drivers and they would include:

1. The sheer number of people who now derive their incomes unproductively through real estate transactions, whether directly or indirectly (why is this somehow more morally acceptable to some than people deriving far more modest incomes from welfare?),
3. Availability of Australian real estate on the Internet,
4. Rising costs of natural resources,
5. Dis-economies of scale. As cities grow larger, the quantity of roads, water pipes, etc. per individual must necessarily increase.

In regard to population-driven demand, surely you can appreciate that housing prices should not be in direct linear proportion to the this country's population? If a substantial proportion of the population stand to go without housing or be faced with having to live in an unsuitable location with few services or unacceptable commuting times, then it seems intuitive that it would cause many to bid up the cost of suitable housing well above what would be in proportion to the actual population increase, and that is certainly what seems to be happening now in Queensland and elsewhere.

Have you had a chance to read Sheila Newman's submission on behalf of Sustainable Population Australia to the Productivity Commission's inquiry into housing costs? It's downloadable from http://candobetter.org/sheila/ as is her previously mentioned Masters thesis on Australia's growth lobby.

It would be useful to pursue this question further elsewhere, perhaps on another OLO forum, or I could set up one on http://candobetter.org/forum

It's also been extensively discussed at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=4834#53462&page=0 (although the discussion there was also marred and needlessly prolonged).

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Also, Yabby's plea that population growth is the driver of housing inflation is clearly disingenuous as he is clearly doing what he can to encourage population growth in WA.

Smithy, this weekends Financial Review contains a special report on real estate,
listing every median average house value by suburb for Australia. The front
headline kind of says it all. * The market has been driven by cheap and easy
credit*

If you look at each postcode, you’ll see that location is what its all about.
If you want to live in Palm Beach or Balmain, it will cost you a couple of
million, yet there are plenty of places in NSW with a median house price
below 200k$. They quote the median house price for each postcode over
10 years. Averaged out, its been around the 10% a year mark. Given that
interest rates dropped dramatically in those 10 years, that’s not remarkable.

Given that more people are earning great salaries and that population has
grown, why should it be surprising that in some areas, houses have become
hugely expensive? High income earners will always be able to outbid low
income earners for property.

Daggett, my claim was that there are many drivers of housing inflation,
population is but one of them. I personally would prefer to use Australian
gas for energy, rather then Arab oil. WA needs people to develop these
projects. If Eastern States people don’t want the jobs, we’ll just have
to bring them in from overseas. There is still plenty of affordable real
estate in WA, just not in the yuppie suburbs, where I really would not
want to live anyhow.

People in real estate are like any other industry, they provide a service,
you can take it or leave it. Nobody forces you to use an agent. Go
and buy a pair of shoes, somebody sells them to you, somebody wholesaled
them, somebody provides the shopping centre where you go to buy them.
Last time I saw figures, the average pair of shoes from China cost around
the 5 US$ mark Lots of people make an income from those shoes along
the way. The cost of distributing something can be far higher then
the cost of manufacture. The real estate industry is no different

I think this land speculation is scandulous.Anyone who says that holding on to land within suburbia (which was meant to be built upon) for more than one year should be called a racketeer.If governments release lands, who do they contact first, their mates ofcourse! It is who you know in this game not what you know! If someone needs a home to live in and is prepared to build on a vacant block, once bought there should be a rule to build the house within ONE year.After one year the permit to build will expire and a new permit bought, do this for three years and the block will be auctioned off.Voila! No more chances for the speculumators.Let them work for their money so business doesn't have to import cheap labor.In meantime abolish landtaxes and put a set price on land so every young couple can afford to build a house to LIVE in.

Yabby,

Concerning your previous claim about being "middle of the road" (which is really a red herring anyway, but since you have made that implausible claim, I think I am entitled to pursue you over that), I ask you again:

What "Labor" policies you support which were not policies which were not already Liberal policies anyway?

If you can't point to any Labor policies which you support which were not already supported by the Liberal Party and which did not originate from Milton Friedman's extremist Chicago School of Economics and which were not first imposed by military dictatorships upon the people of Latin America, then I would suggest to you that your claim of being "middle of the road" is very hollow indeed.