Residential Property

Forum Topics Residential Property

Jarrahman

Added 2 months ago

There's a simple solution to getting increased stock and supply but councils and state governments are always too chicken to actually pull the trigger on action.

Going back a step, the overwhelming reason everyone loves living where they live is the sense of community and amenity. Community is driven by diversity throughout the local area - diversity is age, diversity in backgrounds, diversity in employment, and is ultimately driven and made achievable by diversity in housing stock. I'm in Perth and you don't have to go far to see high demand areas like North Fremantle, Claremont, Shenton Park, Mosman Park where there's housing commission, studio apartments, townhouses, cottages, family homes, large quarter acre blocks and riverfront mansions. The diversity of housing stock comes with diversity of people and the variety of price points for everyone gives great options and at the end of the day, great community.

You also don't have to go far up and down the freeway to be in what I can best describe as a scene from Edward Scissorhands where every house looks the same. The houses are the same, the type of people living in them are the same, there's no commercial or retail offerings, no trees in sight and it's a bland and boring suburbia created by the large corporations (Satterly, Peet, Cedar Woods, etc.).

There are great sites which are left vacant or well underdeveloped - e.g. 3 Oceans site in Scarborough, Matilda Bay Brewery, OBH, where the owners are constantly getting new DA's submitted and approved to increase the value of the underlying land and then banking the increase in book value without actually ever putting a shovel into the ground.

The solution is to increase the land tax and holding costs of vacant property considerably. Not 5/10%, but 100% plus. Make it uneconomical to hoard land so they can drip feed out a billion stages of a development. Force the pace on the developers and landowners.

The increased zoning density has technically allowed increased density, but with developers and land owners not being incentivised to actually do the development, it will never happen. There's dozens of examples - The land at Leighton Beach in North Freo was originally sold to developers in 2007 and a good chunk is still vacant. Claremont Oval still has major sites undeveloped after 15 years of sitting empty. The list goes on...

Trancer

Added 2 months ago

The Australian Institute hosted Alan Kohler for a podcast in December.

https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/fixing-australias-housing-crisis-with-alan-kohler/

I'm really looking forward to this session and already have some questions lined up for it.

If you're not across his work on housing, this podcast is a good listen.

Strawman

Added 2 months ago

Fear not, I will 100% definitely be asking Alan's views on property :)

I've listened to those interviews, and I think he's got a good take.

Trancer

Added a month ago

Just in case you have problems with Slido Tomorrow:

https://x.com/BenPhillips_ANU/status/1888784392425996698/photo/1 House price increases in orders similar to Aus have occurred across many regions. How confident are you that CGT changes in 1999 are the cause. What's the explanation for say Canada and France?
You’ve spoken about making housing a right, not an investment product: in practice, what would this look like, what policies would that involve, what would be the difference for people on the ground?
In your quarterly essay you are sceptical about the political prospects of planning reform. Given for example what's happening in NSW and also in Victoria would you revise this view - ie do you think perhaps there is more support for planning reform than you suggested?
One argument against repeal of negative gearing and the CGT discount is that it would drive away investors and therefore new builds would come to a standstill. To what extent do you think this is the case and what general thoughts do you have on this topic?

Saasquatch

Added a month ago

I've started a substack and I've put my musings down on paper as a way to articulate my thoughts and challenge myself for a potential venture into politics one day (probably worth checking my mental state at this point, I agree).

The post is far too long for on here and I've used AI to voiceover the article.

If people are interested in some views on property with a plethora of data and graphs, I'd love it if you had a look.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thehumancurrency/p/housing-is-not-an-investment?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=9amap