Cox says

Reserve Bank of Australia research indicates that the price of raw land - Sydney urban fringe land for building a house that has not yet been fitted with infrastructure (sewers, water, streets, etc.) has now risen to a price of about $190,000 for a one-eighth acre lot. In the days before smart growth, the land would cost about $1,000. Needless to say, adding an unnecessary nearly $190,000 plus margins to the price of a house makes housing less affordable.

This may be so, but what is the cost including appropriate infrastructure?

There may be a valid criticism of the way in which "smart growth" is mandated. Perhaps sprawl should be allowed, but those building there should be charged the cost of the appropriate infrastructure. This includes efficient transport links, which most of Western Sydney simply does without.

As for travel times - well of course. Longer trips (in distance) take longer (in time), as do shorter trips, by car, where there is congestion. If every one travels everywhere by car, then there will be long trips (in time) in a big (by population) city, whatever the desnsity. If the public transport is adequate then this allows reasonable travel times.

If decent public transport means say 1km of tram line (which does not get obstructed by traffic) per 2 sq km of city (or whatever the appropriate figure would be - one thing is for sure, Wendell Cox either knows nothing or pretends to know nothing of this), then it takes a reasonable density of housing to finance this. (As I suggested earlier, maybe sprawl should be allowed, but those participating should be required to pay the costs.)

Just which part of this does Wendell Cox not understand?

As for the comment about electricity supply - this only confirms for me that the author is willing to make very argument for his case, however stupid. Obviously, electricity cables adequate to the demand will be required whatever the city density. If they're not, then there will be problems. How does a denser city require more electricity cables per house/office/etc?

As folk in the rural areas of the country are too often told - if you don't like it move!

Sorry to inform people, but Sydney and Melbourne are not the be all and end all. If prices are too expensive then perhaps its time to look at other places to live work and play.

My house cost a fraction of what the first poster siad land cost in Sydeny, I live 5 minutes drive from my work one set of lights. Best thing I ever did was move away from Sydeny. Who the hell would want to live there.

The town, & other "planners", should elect John Howard as their patron saint.

He got our guns off us, just in time, to prevent us going out & shooting every damn useless planner, & the entire staff of the uni departments, that train them to be so stupid.

Fact.37% of a house /land package is made up of Govt taxes/charges.
State Govts restrict the supply of land to keep prices elevated.
Developers donate vast sums to both major parties.You don't donate unless you get results.Enough said.

In relation to traffic congestion, Cox says "Sydney is no exception. The average one-way work trip now takes 34 minutes, which equals that of America’s largest urban area, New York, which has more than five times the population and the land area as well as the longest travel time of any major urban area in the nation."

This is not a fair comparison to make. New York City has the largest subway system in the world, with almost 55% of commuters using mass transit rather than driving.
By comparison Sydney has far less investment in mass transportation infrastructure and the percentage of Sydneysiders who use mass transport to commute each day would reflect this.

Obviously greater population density impacts on commute times if there is no adequate transport alternative. But it is also greater population density that makes various forms of mass transit economically feasible due to higher rider ship numbers.

Cox, in neglecting to recognize the demand side of the equation on housing prices, is not alone amongst commentators calling for more land to be made available for housing.

As I have said before in response to other posts on this site - we have to address the demand side before we begin to think about making housing prices more affordable. Our immigration rates are at or near record levels and no end seems to be in sight to government's manic desire to bring in more and more people. These immigrants must live somewhere surely; or do they simply dissolve into the population without producing any "footprint"?

The situation with immigration in Canada is not much different to ours so it does not surprise me to learn that Vancouver and Sydney are the two most expensive housing markets of those covered in the survey Cox refers to.

Not a word in this article about what is driving the suburban cancer - population increase and what is driving that - insane immigration levels and misplaced family welfare.

The writer is clearly a member of,or paid mouthpiece for,The Boosters Club.

I find it difficult to get excited by articles like this.

I can understand that if you live in Melbourne, or out in the sticks, it may provide a little frisson of Schadenfreude for a moment or two. But to someone who actually chooses to live in the most beautiful city in the world, it is utterly meaningless.

To a demographer, a lot of the numbers cannot make any sense, I'm sure. The vital statistics of how much a plot of land costs, and how long it takes to get to work must be a constant fascination to them. But to someone who has lived here for more than twenty years out of choice, and will only be moved out in a box, they are totally irrelevant.

Sure, we have one of the least effective, and possibly most corrupt, State Governments in the country. No question, our Local Councils are a pathetic mirror of the State operations, more interested in factional politics and brown paper bags than actually working for their communities. As a result, our infrastructure is rooted, and our planning laws a poor joke, in which political wheeling destroys more in a day than common sense achieves in a lifetime.

But every time the sun comes up over the city, or reddens the Bridge in late afternoon, that all becomes totally irrelevant.

Don't see what the fuss is about.

A tale of two cities Atlanta Georgia, and Sydney Australia. Atlanta housing about $200,000 average. Sydney about $600,000. The difference: In Atlanta everyone is guaranteed a jury trial on request in any matter involving over $20 by the US Constitution. In Sydney since 1970, it was taken away from us, and it was never granted by the gangster dominated Federal Parliament in the Federal Court of Australia.

The result is that we are governed by lawyers and gangsters, and there is not a lot of difference between the two. The lawyers have an organised gang called the Law Society and dominate the Liberal Party and have a fairly heavy presence in the Labor Party too.

What is reallly sad is that the Parliament of the Commonwealth has fixed the problem, but the State Judges and Magistrates do not allow the Federal Law to apply. We wrote to Baulkham Hills council last year and pointed this out to them, and they said, please take us to court and set us free.We had to admit there is no court to take them to yet. The Land and Environment Court is a lawyers Court. The Federal Court is a lawyers Court, and the High Court is a lawyers Court.

We do not live in a democracy, we live in a lawyers republic, and freedom is an illusion. Until KR and his lot stop being closet Liberals and abolish S 39 Federal Court of Ausrtralia Act 1976, and Order 46 Rule 7A Federal Court Rules Sydney will continue to be the home of sickoes, homeless, and mentally disturbed people without a hope of effective treatment.

The Labor Party Federally fixed the problem. The Liberals have frustrated the solution for 11.5 years. The Labor Party should bite the bullet and fix the Federal Court and watch the fur fly

Today,we have compromised government institutions, feeding urban planners and their insiders(within the urban boundary) damming their own children,elderly,newcomers and the marginalized less than worthy to small box living which has failed everywhere for centuries. Hands up who wants to move into these high density living sandwich boxes and thereby transfer their traditionally australia backyard lifestyle positions to those who truly want them. Do I hear a whimper,No! What a bunch of weak and greedy,selfishly large bunch of politically correct, nimby, flea bitten hypocrites.

I don't want to live in a box nor hours away from the city/workplace.

I want to live in the city as it used to be (in this case Perth) before population growth, largely (if not all)driven by government policy on immigration and its inducements for us to breed, breed, breed.

When will they ever learn ?

A large part of the reason housing is so expensive in Sydney and
relatively in other cities is that back in the 1980s the government
forced lending institutions to lend against both the applicants income.

The result was that twice the amount of money was now available.

Economics 101.

What happens when the amount of money in a particular market is doubled ?

It was and still is a bonanza for developers.
It also forced up the first birth age of mothers.

<Economics 101.

What happens when the amount of money in a particular market is doubled ?>

Well, if the supply of housing is flexible wrt demand, and the cost of building a house is $X, it isn't very hard to work out what happens. If everyone decides to buy a house, the price initially rises. This then creates an increased profit incentive to build more dwellings. The cost of building may well rise with the increased demand for tradesman, but eventually this will lead to more tradies lured by a good income. Eventually, with an increased supply of housing, you would expect rents to drop, meaning lower returns. As the decision to invest in housing is compared with the returns from other investments, a poor investment return could well push down prices.

What is happening in the Australian property market is quite different. The supply of new housing is severely restricted by government regulation. Demand is being driven by high immigration. And councils are now moving to further limit the number of renting occupants in a dwelling, which would impact further on rents.

Were landowners allowed the right to build low cost dwellings which meet health and safety requirements on their property, Australia's housing affordability crisis would quickly end.

If we had a Commonwealth government that had a court that allowed ordinary people to enforce Commonwealth laws, against State and Local Governments then the sick city of Sydney, would suddenly recover.

Paul Keating’s government enacted all the measures necessary to fix Sydney completely, remove the housing shortage, get the homeless off the streets, and restore it to a vibrant successful city, except one. That one piece of legislation that makes government in Canberra useless, is s 39 Federal Court of Australia Act 1976. The Judges of the Federal Court of Australia have made another, and while Order 46 Rule 7A Federal Court Rules remains on the Statute List, lawyers rule. There is no shortage of land, just restrictive trade practices. There is no shortage of good Statute law, just a monopoly on enforcement that makes them irrelevant.

We do not have a democracy in Australia at all. We have an aristocracy that completely thumbs its nose at the federal Parliament. Fix that small pressure point, and let democracy flourish, and Sydney will become a model city, in every way

I think Fester missed the point.
No matter what the other factors that are involved in setting prices,
the fact is twice as much money *per house* is available because of
taking both incomes into account.

<No matter what the other factors that are involved in setting prices,
the fact is twice as much money *per house* is available because of
taking both incomes into account.>

Bazz.

Having women in the workforce means a bigger economy. There is more money for everything, but does that mean that everything is twice the price, or does it mean that more goods are available? You need to learn a little more about "economics 101" yourself. This link on supply and demand might help:

http://www.investopedia.com/university/economics/economics3.asp

<B. The Law of Supply
Like the law of demand, the law of supply demonstrates the quantities that will be sold at a certain price. But unlike the law of demand, the supply relationship shows an upward slope. This means that the higher the price, the higher the quantity supplied. Producers supply more at a higher price because selling a higher quantity at a higher price increases revenue.>