So Spikeee,

What would else it take from daggerrrrt to convince you that population growth drives up housing costs?

All the newspaper reports up here in Qld talk of immigration from the south causing a scarcity in housing, which is in turn driving up the cost of renting and house pruchase.

Are you trying to tell us that you don't accept the laws of supply and demand?

That should have been "What would else WOULD it take from daggerrrrt to convince you that population growth drives up housing costs?"

daggert & cacponix

House prices are affected by a large number of factors - not just population growth (interstate and overseas immigration and emigration). Other causes include:
interest rates,
stock market movements,
land releases,
building material and labour costs,
declining household sizes,
inflation,
unemployment,
government infrastructure investment,
transport infrastructure,
policies on negative gearing and taxation changes, etc.

All of the above relate, but are not limited, to simple supply and demand economics.
If migration were the only or even the main factor what would explain sharply falling house prices in the USA and the UK where migration levels remain very high?

According to CNNMoney.com April 29, 2008, the S&P Case/Shiller Home Price Index, which tracks 20 of the largest US housing markets, showed prices plummeting by 12.7% in the 12 months ending February. That's the biggest fall since the index began tracking prices in 2000. The 10-city Case/Shiller index is down 13.6% year-over-year, the biggest drop since its launch in 1987. (http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/29/real_estate/housing_price_fall_deepens/index.htm?postversion=2008042914)

In the UK, home loans slumped 64% in the last year. This is the lowest figure on record since the survey series began in 1997. The continued scarcity of new buyers, deterred by hefty demands for deposits from lenders and tumbling house prices, will further drag down property values, which have fallen by more than 10% in a year. Home sales fell to a 30-year low in August and house prices fell at the fastest annual pace in a quarter century according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors this month. (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/property_and_mortgages/article4808480.ece)

Meanwhile, the OECD warns Australia that the current boom in housing prices here has lasted twice as long as past housing booms, increasing the risk of a serious bust. Historically, most booms in housing prices have ended in busts which, at worst, wiped out all the rise in prices during the boom. (http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/house-prices-world-highest/2005/11/30/1133311106610.html)

Local economists also warn that Australian house prices are vulnerable to falls over the next year or so. (www.amp.com.au/display/file/0,2461,FI186392%255FSI4305,00.pdf? filename=olivers_insights_08052008.pdf)

Immigration is just one factor and it’s not helpful to caste it as THE cause of THE housing crisis.

Spikey, firstly, can I ask: Are you intentionally misspelling 'daggett' as 'daggert'?

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Yes, there are factors other than immigration which have added to housing hyper-inflation (duhhh!), but even if all those other factors were to be removed, we would still have housing costs massively inflated compared to what they were a generation or two ago. From my recollection it has risen from 3 times a median annual income to 8 times. (Divergence, could you verify this?) That surely represents a truly disastrous fall in the living standards of many Australians as well as a massive unearned transfer of wealth into the pockets of some others.

I suggest you read the Canberra Times article "Rising Immigration pushes housing stress to breaking point" (http://www.crispinhull.com.au/ct_html_docs/CanberraTimesArticles.html) in the Canberra Times if you still refuse to acknowledge immigration as a principle driver of housing inflation (as even intuition and common sense would surely suggest). The article is at

"The proportion of immigrants in Australia’s population growth is at its highest since the Gold Rush -- at 59%. Net immigration has been about 200,000 a year for the past four years and rising. It has doubled from the number in the four years before that. In the first quarter of 2008 it rose 71,600 to an annualised rate of 286,000, the highest on record, according to ABS figures issued this week. And we wonder why we have a housing affordability crisis."

"...

"This is not Hansonism or rascism. It does not matter what colour or creed the immigrants are, it is a question of pure numbers. We are not providing proper shelter for the increasing population – immigrant or native. Australia’s population rose by 336,800 in the 12 months to March. That is a city the size of Canberra. At 2.5 people per dwelling that is about 135,000 dwellings a year. Add to that about 40,000 more dwellings to replace dilapidated housing stock and we need about 175,000 new dwellings a year. But we have built about 35,000 fewer dwellings than that in most years in the past half decade."

(tobecontinued)

(continuedfromabove)

"Small wonder then that we have a housing shortage, high prices, high rents and about 180,000 on public-housing waiting lists. Are we building more public houses to meet this need? No. The number of public dwellings has fallen by 30,000 to 340,000 in the past five years."

"...

"As in the US, immigration is a major public policy failure.

"We have some grim choices: open up the vast tracts of vacant land on city fringes to urban sprawl and too bad for the environment or agriculture; cram more people in to existing cities and suburbs and too bad for existing residents and strained infrastructure; or (heaven forbid) drastically cut the immigration program."
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I mentioned earlier people I know who have been personally affected by housing unaffordability, because those with whom I have argued about this have seemed not to have any understanding of how housing unaffrodability affects ordinary Australians.

The fact that you personally know such people who are homeless and yet are attempting here to deny the blindingly obvious link between population growth and housing inflation that is causing them, and so many like them, misery, anxiety and hardship hardly does you any credit in my view.

So, what's your secret agenda, Spikey?

Perhaps peddling this propaganda may be good for your career prospects with the growth-pushing Victorian Government?

I will return in the near future soon in order to dissect your summary dismissal of the evidence I presented earlier.

Daggett,

This factsheet shows the cost of an average house in Australia as having risen from a multiple of 3.3 times the average wage in 1970 to 7.4 times in 2005.

http://www.findem.com.au/factsheets/housingfactsheet.pdf

The factsheet says average annual wage, which would imply the higher mean wage, but I think that this is a mistake for median wage. The increase has been considerably greater in major metropolitan areas. This webpage contains a graph showing movements in house prices, rents, and average wages in Sydney:

http://www.fbe.unsw.edu.au/cityfutures/publications/presentations/ncoss.pdf