The pain in falling land prices
photo credit: Travis S. The US housing market is a living hell. Homeowners are being boiled alive. The price of land was bid up to staggering multiples of incomes, until it no longer made sense to buy a house. And…
Tag housing
Be bold, Mr Baillieu: abolish Stamp Duty and Payroll Tax
photo credit: djking To win the election, the new Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu pledged to phase in reductions in Stamp Duty by fifty per cent on real estate transactions under $600,000 for first home buyers. This is a very modest…
Melbourne’s secret plan
photo credit: Lucia. . . A secret map of Melbourne’s transport plans for the next 30 years was published in The Age yesterday. Doubts were raised about its authenticity (weakly, unconvincingly) by the Victorian government. Average householders may shrug, but…
Mr Presley has left the stadium.
photo credit: RR and Camera At the peak of his career Elvis Presley was so popular audiences would sit and clap at the end of the night, demanding encore after encore. They couldn’t get enough. The only way to end…
Treasury to Gillard: “Fix Housing.”
photo credit: itmpa Last week Treasury made public its Red Book – the economic advice it gives to the incoming government. In it, Treasury lays out a big, bold reform agenda. On housing, the Red Book is scathing: “Access to…
Investor opinion: an uneasy equilibrium
photo credit: Dru! A survey of property investors in The Age today by Colemar Brunton shows sentiment delicately poised between those who see the market flat or falling and those anticipating further rises. This is not the bursting of…
Like Gold in a Coal Mine
photo credit: 10b travelling Clear-eyed media commentary in the national interest is rare and sweet. Alan Mitchell’s analysis of the Henry Tax Review in the Australian Financial Review – A tax on all your economic rents – is such a creature.…
Henry Review puts Land Tax on the Agenda
photo credit: anarchosyn The Henry Tax Review’s highlighting of Land Tax as a policy direction is a welcome and encouraging development, says Prosper Australia. “This is THE tool to liberate the people of Australia from their current financial difficulties,” Prosper…
Dear Australia, the world is watching, waiting for our bubble to burst
photo credit: robertivanc The great property speculation game is over in America and Europe. The music has stopped. Forty years of steadily increasing pressure has been released. Houses are worth a fraction of what people paid in better times,…
Expensive land is changing the shape of Australia.
photo credit: Zach K The Melbourne versus Sydney rivalry has been reignited – Melbourne’s population is growing faster and is projected to overtake Sydney by 2037, a new report predicts. Going Nowhere, a report by BIS Shrapnel for…