What an amazing world where a financial structure such as the proposed AussieMac can be described as a "technology"!

Anyway, the real and only enviromentally supportable solution to the housing crisis is to stop net immigration and to begin to reduce the Australian population to levels that can be sustained at the lower levels of energy that will be available in the future. Stop population growth and watch the housing crisis disappear!

Yes houses are far too expensive and they are too expensive and not
being built, not because building them is too expensive, but because
land is too expensive.

Land is too expensive, because the chardonay set that runs urban
planning, pontificated that they would force people into high
density living, rather then urban sprawl.

I'm told that taxes on charges on a block in NSW, are over 100k$
alone. That added cost prices land out of reach of many, for its
as much as the house might cost, just in fees!

Make land available (Australia is not short of land) at an affordable
price and companies will build homes, that families can afford.

Pure and simple, the chardonay set got it wrong and we are paying
the cost for that.

I wonder why Australia needs so many new houses, when the population is hardly increasing.

Even rural towns with a shrinking population have new suburbs that eat up the bush and consume extra resources.

Perhaps it has got to do with the fact that 1 in 4 households is now a single person household.

I recon you got it right HRS, the popularity of no husband households, and people that just prefer to live alone. This must cause a lot of extra building going on. That wat makes the reserve bank figures somewhat on the rubbery side, when they try to figure out weather they raise interest rates or not. There has got to be another benchmark on which to calculate their predictions.

HRS,

Australia's population is actually growing by 1.6%, which would imply a population doubling time of a little over 43 years if it continued. This is due to both natural increase (momentum from past high fertility rates) and net migration. See

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3101.0

The high housing prices may well have been deliberately engineered by the federal and state governments, which have abandoned decentralisation and are encouraging population growth. They make people and corporations who own land richer, they make the banks richer, and they increase the participation rate because families must usually now have two incomes to survive. They also buy the acquiescence of the older generation, who already own houses and don't usually have much superannuation, to government policies such as means testing of the aged pension and mass migration.

Mick If we don't ave population growth we dont ave anything. so ya better come up with something else to put ya blame on.

Here we go again;
Why is it that I am the only one who knows why housing is so expensive ?

It is simple stupid, lend on two incomes and the price of houses
matches the money available !

From the time women pressed the government to force the lending
institutions to lend on both incomes the price of housing rose to
meet the amount of money available.

It is market forces lesson one.

Then on top of that you have a high level of immigration.
To alleviate the problems of cities like Sydney and Melbourne stop
the issue of development applications.
There is no other way to prevent Sydney and Melbourne growing.
It would force development into country areas which has been state
government policy for years.

Bazz,

Your argument doesn't explain why it is just the price of land that has gone up and not building costs, which have been essentially stable for more than 30 years, nor why cars and electrical goods are very much cheaper in real terms than they were 30 years ago, even though people have more money. No doubt if the wife's income wasn't counted, land prices would be lower, but they would still absorb all the money available. There is only so much land within reasonable commuting distance of a major city, where people usually have to live if they need a job to survive. The only reasonable explanation for what is happening is that it is deliberate government policy, although the government and its corporate donors want the high immigration for other reasons besides driving up land prices. Another advantage for the politicians that I didn't mention is increased government revenue from stamp duty and other taxes.

House building costs went up as there was a step change
when the rules changed and applications for loans offered two incomes.
Prices have been stable in terms of two incomes since then.
The change occurred in around 1975 so you probably never saw the change
and you think it has always been like this.
Land went up by more because there is less competition in land sales
to builders. The developers are the ones who make increased money.
The builders just pass it on.

The only way the problem can be fixed is to borrow on one income.
Then the price of houses will match income available.
Can it be any other way ? Houses just have to affordable or they will
not sell and the price will be reduced until the house is sold.

Simple isn't it ?

However it will be harder to go back than it was to make the blunder
in the first place.

Bazz,

Given the competition for the limited supply of land within commuting distance of a city, the couples who both work and save most of their two incomes for years to put up a very large deposit, in addition to whatever the bank may lend them on the basis of one income, will be the ones who win out. The total amount of money involved may indeed be less, but the stress on people is likely to be as great. There simply isn't enough land to go around, unless people are packed in at very high densities, which are not conducive to raising children. See Prof. Bill Randolph's "Children in the Compact City"

http://www.aracy.org.au/AM/Common/pdf/2006_ChildFriendlyCities/2006301006%20Children%20in%20the%20Compact%20City.pdf

The only cures are decentralisation and an end to massive government sponsored population growth, i.e. mass migration and incentives such as the baby bonus.

Oily;
Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in
a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth E Boulding