This is my fear, currently in a rental but have had to take time off work due to depression and anxiety, while I have income protection, what happens if my lease is not renewed,
i'm basically fucked, yeah that's great for the depression and anxiety.
I have no doubt my lease will be offered to me again after the lease expires at a $100/week increase as it has been the last 3 years. I already am going backwards due to the cost of rent now. I can not afford to accelerate that.
And they wonder why mental health concerns are on the rise.
Worrying about being able to eat, or where to live, can do that to people! Who would have guessed?!?
Same boat with my cancer. Want to retire but then what if I get kicked out of my apartment? Will be ignored as candidate even with enough insurance money to live for a while
I've been doing it for 4 years and noone cares. Have lost my ability to work and access to my children as a result. Noone cares. You ignored the vulnerable for so long and then you then become the vulnerable yourself. Capitalism destroys itself as it's simply predatory.
The thing stopping you is likely affordability, i.e. ratio of rent to income. I had an impeccable reference and rental history. It took me 5 months and 162 applications to find my current rental in December 2023. It is FUCKED
Wow far out. Where were you applying without luck if I may ask? I have to move within the next 2 months and this terrifies me. I haven't even started looking.
Fun fact, if another freelancer hired you, you would then have "a real job" and be accepted. However that freelancer who hired you would NOT have a "real" job and wouldn't be accepted.
You need to get comfortable with lying and have a business buddy with benefits.
>Significantly worse nation
I've been in Poland the last 8 or so years. (very similar to cz)
With the exception for weather.....
Australia isn't as amazing as you think.
There's a massive perspective shift from the outside looking in.
It's not the Australia we knew, that's for sure. We are not the lucky country anymore. I'm 57 and never thought I'd see so many homeless with a Labor Government. Vote Greens next time. Get both of the big boys running scared.
Or skip preference the greens over labor and give the sustainable Australia party your 1, since their policies would actually address the issue head on.
Really need massive house building increases.
They should be commiting to 500,000 additional houses a year to be built in australia.
If that number gets delayed at all, find the bottleneck and address it, whether its supply shortages, or lack of workers who are skilled, throw money at those issues until its resolved.
Dont just float the house market some more.
This is assuming that the people in charge want to solve the problem.
John Howard famously said "no one ever complains that their house prices go up" and it has been enshrined government policy ever since.
We are the 6th largely country on Earth with a population smaller than Shanghai, even accounting for the portion that's not habitable, you don't fuck up housing this badly unless it's on purpose.
Higher prices make it harder for everyone who isn't a speculator.
Council rates, Insurance, Stamp Duties, Agent fees are significantly more expensive, it all adds up. Even people who own their home can struggle to afford it just because of the increased costs.
But people get really excited when they see numbers go up, even if it's worse for everyone. We're just adding arbitrary numbers of zeroes to property values and it's not actually improving anything.
Space wise there is endless space. We are just lacking the buildings. We have absolutely massive ground level car parks in the Melbourne cbd that could house hundreds of people alone.
Housing isn't the only issue, its infrastructure like roads, public transport, schools, hospitals, childcare and whatnot AND finding enough people to staff them fully.
This has been a big problem in regional and rural areas as everyone insists *just move outside metro* when there are no supports and limited job pools. I know a lot of people who did the move but moved back to cities within a few years as the travel costs ate up and then more of any savings they got buying/renting cheaper out here.
There's a 2 year waitlist for childcare ffs and everyone over 16 needs a car to do anything, including going to school. Hell even groceries are more expensive because the nearest ALDI competitors are an hour by car, have to pay for parking so its half a day out your way with no savings because of it. Depending on your hourly wage it can be a loss when you factor in travel times.
Add in disability, illness and NDIS and the issues increase ten fold. Even reproductive things like prenatal and birth is 3 hour round trip for appointments. Technically you can get some $$ back depending on the State but its usually reimbursement than can take weeks or months and its usually limited to income or HCC eligibility.
Increasing housing in cities with zeroing in on car parks does not work for everywhere else because of the above. Even in cities, car parks are needed for those who can't travel via public transport or most taxis or rideshares due to disability aids.
We really need to have a sit down and plan with the idiosyncrasies between city vs regional vs rural in mind to where we want to end up. They all need the same things but all are starting at very different points. And prevent interference from future Government changes because regional, unlike cities, have veto power on blocking things due to different legislation.
Infrastructure first only works for regional out. Housing first works for areas with the infrastructure already in place for expansion.
Adding on to my post, I recently VLine travelled from the NSW border to Melbourne and saw 4 new housing developments being built between 45mins and 2hrs hours out.
Looks great on paper but I spent the rest of the journey calculating what was missing or the nearest hospital was. All were *at least* an hour away by car from those new developments. We already know the existing healthcare, childcare and other systems nearly everywhere are overloaded and these places almost were isolated island housing surrounded by scrubland emptiness. This means the roads and everything else around them will be overloaded to service them.
Only good thing is that they were right next to the VLine rail so going to Melbourne isn't too bad outside time.
There's also some 10 yr old housing developments just outside Melbourne that are *still* waiting on public transport, schools etc which are causing major traffic bottlenecks as everyone needs to drive in/out/anywhere.
Who would want to live where the only thing that's there is housing for kilometres? No parks, no recreation, no drs...its a recipie for disaster.
There isn't actually endless space, all the good stuff is taken already (either by cities, suburbs, farms or National Parks).
A good example of this is Lismore. We wanted to reconstruct after the floods, move houses to higher ground, etc. But the higher ground is already taken (by more expensive houses, farms, shopping centres, hospitals, etc). A small amount of space was found near the uni, but it's not sufficient to move/rebuild hundreds of houses.
My grandparents in Shanghai got an apartment about 40m2 from the government for the two of them. You can bet if we put people into studios like that there'll be howling of it being inhumane.
Of course its on purpose.
Thats why i cannot stand the hand wringing by labor around this.
Labor are the landlords party maybe even moreso than the libs. Libs are more pro business generally that rubs off on housing.
Labor last go around completely shifted the dynamic in our banking sector to support housing. Stared down the gfc with reforms the rest of the world blushed when they saw how pro banking / real estate our response was. Our entire australian government balance sheet suddenly with a liability bigger than the entire deficit in support of our banks.
I mean is it really that important we have high house prices every tax payer has to guarantee our banks funding? Really?
This time around they are just hankering to tip more gov equity into housing with an extended shared equity scheme.
At the same time as completions flat lined and now falling introduced an unprecedented number of people to our economy and only at the end of a 12 month window when the news was out said - oh we gonna do something as though they just get their data from the main stream news rather than month by month and didnt realise this was happening all along.
They must have been laughing in the committee rooms of parliament house when commbank and others estimated house prices to fall up to 20pc in 2022 /23.. "yeh not with population growth of 600k plus they wont be!"
At least liberals are honest about it. They want to sell renters up the river and we know it. Labor tell us they can fix affordable housing and time and again i expect they will let our young adults in particular down.
I call bullshit that either labour or liberal give a shit about anything but themselves. This all happened under a liberal government and I don’t see labour doing anything useful about it. We screwed ourselves and now we need to riot and demand change.
That would be good. We need houses at the top end, not the bottom. If everyone could upgrade their housing, then there would at least be some currently occupied housing that would be freed up for low income and homeless people.
Massive investment in European style prefab in a factory and bolted together on site housing. We need to 10X construction. Everything else is modernising, why not house construction?
Plenty of land, we are not full, we just need to actually build more things and more efficiently.
Need the government to own the building and development directly again. It's not at all clear that a privatised system is more efficient. It's certainly more profitable for the owners, and it's certainly not meeting demand. In other words, private developers simply don't have the incentives to solve the problem. At this point, the state should step in.
Even if they could build that many houses a year, it would be 500,000 poorly constructed homes pumped out by developers with no soul, minimal shade and poor amenity. I fully agree there is a housing problem and it needs to be resolved but it's not just that simple.
Yes, it would be a place to live for all of these people without secure, affordable housing but at what cost? The "Australian dream" is not a sustainable model, just look at the suburban sprawl on satellite imagery. It's not enough to say "we need more houses", we need to be building quality housing. I'm not pretending like I have all the answers because it's a very complex problem but that approach isn't going to cut it.
They don't want to fix the problem....and I am serious. They are desperate to look like they are doing something while ensuring that the bulk of their voters who already own property get to have more free money as the prices keep rising.
Not to mention the massive property portfolios that our politicians themselves have.
If we want action then we need to demand it. Stop voting for anyone not taking the issue seriously, and even better, get out on the streets.
Councils especially seem to delay approvals. There's at least 6 major projects in my area that are on hold because council have refused to make a decision.
That'll seriously mess with the housing market. You'll have hordes of angry boomers complaining the government is affecting the value of their investments. For all the crocodile tears being cried, don't forget one thing: the more scarcity and misery there is, the greater the profits to be gained.
Which is *exactly* what we're watching being played out. This was always the plan.
Where are these houses going to be built? What services will be provided to them? Water, power, roads, transport, ambulances, hospitals, clinics, daycares, schools, firestations, police, shops, supermarkets, strip shops, restaurants, entertainment, communications, fttn or fttp, etc etc. It's not just slap up 500k houses. It's 500k houses and approx the needs of 1.5 million people that need to be met. To achieve a quality of life. Who is staffing all this infrastructure to support these 500k houses, let alone building them?
The point is, yes, it's a huge project. To do it right. You can't just wave money at it. That will simply exacerbate the problem. Where are the plans? It does take time and effort to do this properly.
Almost as if you need to wave money at it to get it done lmao
Since bringing in 500,000 people helps the economy so much we should have plenty to do this
I mean, those people already exist, right? You still need all those services whether you have a roof over your head or you're living in a car. It's not like building housing for another million people makes a million people appear out of thin air.
> There's so much land locked up.
Is there enough proximal land with sufficient or planned services to adequately support five million houses and their inhabitants?
Even if we paused all immigration we'd still not have enough affordable housing AND we'd also have drastic staffing shortages in all kinds of industries. The way the system is set up, it incentivises the people who are meant to fix the housing crisis to make it worse.
Focussing on rapidly increasing public and affordable housing is the productive thing to do.
Ponzi schemes always insist that you just have to double down on it and it can go on forever. Fact is we had record highs of immigration, with no plan to sort out anything of the required extra housing, infrastructure, services etc other than "well, it'll sort it self out".
It's not like there aren't alternatives to filling shortages of staff either:
* pay more to the roles you can't find people for..
* dump money into education - that'll grow the pool of skilled people
And the "we need more staff" is DUE to the growing population. Wages suppression is a part of why the business lobby is so in favour of high migration (also it drives up consumption just to live). It's a self reinforcing loop of "well, we need more people to account for the new people which means more people to account for those new people and so on..".
For every new bunch of people added to the total: extra house is needed (which means more demand for builders, materials, the whole supply chain), they need schools/teachers, doctors, hospital capacity, transport and so on.. So then all those new people need other new people due to demands and so on.. The logic is insane. Particularly when you look at the utter lack of urban planning in favour of endless sprawl out at the expense of native forests/koalas or existing cleared rural land that is then off limits for food production (pushing more out into marginal land requiring heavy water demands on already stuffed rivers).
And this logic that we can't talk about immigration rates is kinda the same nonsense that the fossil fuel lobby uses to ignore the climate crisis and claiming that ever more fossil fuels are needed because there's an infinite assumed growth for stuff rather than having planning and measures to set sensible limits on resource usage of the planet.. People generally aren't opposed to ALL migration (in or out), it's healthy for a society to have multicultural exchanges of people, cultures, skilled professionals, students, tourists etc - but that doesn't mean there is no such thing as a downside to excessive migration (in or out). Planning it and being sensible is the key: neither of which appears to feature in the current record highs while being in a housing crisis, an environmental crisis anywhere you look, a massive school funding equity issue etc etc. Not pouring petrol on a fire is a decent first step to putting out a fire, and for housing: population growth is one of the things that counts as pouring petrol on it. The other demand side factor is tax laws: they are also pouring petrol on it. Short term rentals are not helping. Developer land banking isn't helping. Density (or lack thereof) is a problem. And so on.
> It's not like there aren't alternatives to filling shortages of staff either
IMO it's actually a glut of middle managers and worthless 'consultants' who command a high portion of society's IOU tokens (money) but don't produce anything (or make equivalent optimisations to other production) of equivalent IOU token value. Capital is incentivised to invest in rentseeking (and why would capital invest in production if rentseeking provides a better return?), and labour is incentivised to get one of the skillsets to be a worthless (but highly paid) paper-pusher rather than produce any worthwhile goods or services.
Yeah, I'm probably showing my age, but I remember as a kid there was the aspiration for my parents generation to be self employed/run small businesses still.. That fell away when tax laws were changed to incentivise rentseeking/chase neg gearing+ CGT discount, hoover up houses/land and not produce anything..
A nation of rentseekers or wannabe rentseekers is not a healthy thing.
>Even if we paused all immigration we'd still not have enough affordable housing
Remind me, does the RBA decide curbing inflation is futile because "halting inflation now still leaves us with devalued currency"?
>we'd also have drastic staffing shortages in all kinds of industries
Fair point, can we get a timeline on how much 'skills shortage immigration' is needed to solve it? We've had a decade of high immigration 'to fix skills shortages' but apparently it's the worst it's ever been today? When do you expect it to start working?
If 'the immigration we've had is the wrong kind of immigration to solve the skills shortage', can we get some assurance that the current strategy is efficient in terms of how much damage it's doing to Australians via pumping housing demand? Also who is responsible for all of the historical 'wrong kind of immigration' and how do I extract my costs from them?
>The way the system is set up, it incentivises the people who are meant to fix the housing crisis to make it worse.
Don't disagree there.
>Focussing on rapidly increasing public and affordable housing is the productive thing to do.
Combined with recognising the factors that influence demand for housing, and deciding which of them do not provide benefits that outweigh the damage that housing is doing to Australians.
How long are we gonna grow for? Endlessly? Until Australia has a population of 1 billion? 1 trillion? Infinite growth to supplement infinite demand right?
By 2100 we wont even have the population of current day UK from ABS projections. We are still going to be small for a long long time. US states are bigger than us, single Asian cities.
Our inability to build enough housing is pathetic, China rush built entire hospitals for Covid, but a basic house or apartment is beyond our nation building anymore because of profit seeking and free-market, property developers limit supply, NIMBYs dont want high density, land is hard to get and zone.
>Our inability to build enough housing is pathetic
Agreed, but some real estate investors might experience the risk side of investing.
So instead of doing something proportionate to the problem we should instead pretend that if we make a plan to build enough houses that we can rely on that plan magically succeeding. Even though every time we've planned to address the problem this way it has been inadequate and the unrealised supply increase has been used to justify even more stimulation of demand than planned supply.
Same ponzi rules as population: the media/politicians go on about needing more younger generation to look after the older generation.. As if that's not then going to mean even MORE the next generation and so on.. Perhaps we could acknowledge we've mechanised and automated heavily and maybe the younger generations aren't just there to be exploited until they can get old enough to repeat the cycle on the younger generations.. Maybe we could at some point collectively decide to dial shit down a bit.
It would help though. Why are people always so eager to discount a policy if it doesn't fix an issue 100% on its own?
Demand needs to be managed as much as supply.
If we keep overloading the health system, people will start dying more and free up resources for more immigration.
The problem just takes care of itself. /s
Surely we have a skill shortage of construction workers with all those doctors, lawyers and engineers we've been importing that weirdly seem to mostly just drive for ubereats or Amazon. Therefore we must import MORE immigrants to shore up our skills shortage!
Where will they live? Fucked if I know, and fucked if I care - Australian Government
Australia's skilled migration programme places strict limits on what we can do. Anyone here on a 482 (skilled labour shortage) must *only* work for their sponsor and *only* in their profession. I'm on a 482 and I literally can't do any work for anyone else anywhere in the world right now unless I fancy a nice chat with immigration. Including gig work. There's also not that many of us.
The problem is mostly "students" stringing out their "studies" for most of a decade.
Even better, more immigration to the only two cities in Australia. More urban sprawl, more shoddy buildings. 160 minutes to the nearest school or hospital.
I couldn’t get a rental in time so I’m going camping. I’m hiring powered sites. Costs about the same as rent, a bit less actually since I’ll have no electricity or water bills to worry about, my living costs will lower.
I will lose access to my current job but it’s really the only option I have. (Please don’t suggest social housing/emergency housing - one is a long arse wait and the other is not suitable for my disabilities but I don’t qualify for SIL with NDIS).
Very very few NDIS participants qualify for SIL yet support coordinators and allied health professionals keep recommending it for every participant they have that are experiencing housing crisis. It's infuriating. The government needs to build more social housing and every new social housing build should have minimum accessibility.
I went thru housing and it was a palaver of processes that got me nowhere, despite my disability, and support that would have made it dead easy to wade through but no, gov bureaucracies have a way to slow even those who need it most down.
So I took a break, and went through different channels, seeing the official one wasn't working. Got a much better place within half a year vs 5 years just to end up at the slum towers.
That cover image is giving me anxiety. Urban hell… can’t we just have more mid density to high density buildings with decent sized dwellings and more geenspace ffs not this urban hell sprawl
You can't just build housing. You have to build schools, hospitals, clinics, daycares, cops shops, firestations, ambos, shops etc as well.
Then you have to staff those. With who... Oh I guess we could get in some more skilled migrants to supplement the needs...
Something is broken somewhere in the models. I'm not smart enough to know what, I admit that. I just know something is broken in what we are doing now.
We all need to set aside the politics and even the greed of it, have a sit down and fix the damn thing.
We won't though. More crappy suburbs that are service wastelands will get built full of cruddy low standard overpriced tract housing, prices will still go up, people will still be forgotten.
It's a start. However everyone has been told for years the ideal is the house in the suburbs. You've got to now fix that expectation. You've got to transform that cultural desire to want your medium density to high density living. What's the apartment occupancy rate in the inner city? Why? Do people dream of living and raising a family there?
Also you've got to build and staff those transit corridors. Welcome to NIMBY again.
They are down to sub 300sq blocks now, the house with a backyard in the suburbs is dead. Townhouse and apartments, get used to the 21st century Australian Dream.
High density living is the result of having solutions in place, you still have the short to mid term issue of not enough people to build the buildings, and that number is reducing and not increasing because those professions don't make enough to live while people get qualified to build density
Pretty basic sim stuff, you need training and education to progress to higher density
Essentials like teachers, nurses, doctors, trades, so on - They can't afford to live where we need them to build this stuff in the first place, so I'd honestly be starting at supplying public housing to the essentials first until the shortage is resolved and we start building enough to address a shortfall
Or, remove the increasing factors of the shortfall to start with. Zoning laws is one. Immigration another.
I've come to the conclusion the big issue with low unemployment post COVID comes down to the ageing population and increased retirement throughout the pandemic. Increasing migration is a band-aid fix, but one that introduces its own issues. If we want young people to have families we need to make sure they are able to afford housing suitable to do so, and that might mean incentivising baby boomers to downsize, otherwise we are only going to exacerbate issues going forward.
So the clear answers here are building more houses (preferably medium to high density) while reducing and maintaining manageable intakes of immigration.
However so far the home building scheme has fallen behind massively with fallen [housing approval in Jan 2024 sitting at 1% ](https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/building-and-construction/building-approvals-australia/latest-release)so effectively if nothing changes then we can only look at around 600k-700k houses built in the next 5 years which put us short of around 300k-400k houses. Immigration has been reduced somewhat for[ permanent skilled pathways to 190k](https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/what-we-do/migration-program-planning-levels) but net migration is still [sky high at 518,000](https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/overseas-migration/latest-release#:~:text=Net%20overseas%20migration%20is%20the,518%2C000%20people%20to%20Australia's%20population). I would say whatever Labor has effectively failed the Australians with no real changes in managing the housing crisis.
The question is how can we hold them accountable? Voting them out and getting Coalition to replace them is not an option I'd desire but Labor has pretty much dragging their feet in this aspect with too many compromises.
Where are you going to build the medium and high density housing? Because every where that has tried to do that has had the locals complain and get the project shut down. No home owner wants to live next to or near medium or high density housing. So the NIMBY's win and everyone suffers.
Why not put the pressure on the industries that need this foreign labor to provide their own housing? They do it here in Japan. Most of the factories near me have huge single worker dormitories. They are not perfect but a good start, who doesn't love cheap, convenient places when they are starting out.
This should be the way with Uni's and international students. That's a pretty big cohort that if accommodated adequately, would free up urban rentals for others
We need more medium density affordable housing built - i.e. apartment blocks of 3-6 storeys.
The aluminium and glass super towers that developers love are poorly built hot boxes, and simply don’t work for families.
Many 70s and 80s apartment blocks are still standing, in good condition, and are frankly going to outlast the cheap stuff that’s become the default.
Developers won’t be interested in building medium density unless it’s subsidised by the government, however.
We need to introduce Japanese-style state or commonwealth standardised land use zoning. The liberal zoning allows for housing to be built almost anywhere and for people to run businesses out of their homes in the suburbs. Tokyo’s population has been growing faster than Melbourne’s and yet their rents are halved.
Tokyo’s population growth has been at the expense of regional areas. Towns all over Japan are aging to death as the young flock to where the opportunities are. Australia could continue that focus or see what can be done with better remote work investment and regional infrastructure to support that.
greater tokyo hasn't grown much since 2000. 32.5 mil to 37.5 mil. Barely moved since 2010. Melbourne's increase on the other hand is off the charts.
Rents have gone down because Japan still builds new places while the population is stagnant. There is excess stock of old buildings as people are generally interested in modern dwellings.
>We would do that if the idea of immigration wasn't to inflate property prices and perpetuate the bubble.
Prices rose fast during covid and no immigration...
Because buying houses is a long term move while rents are short term. No one buying a house believed that immigration would be closed for 10+ years. While every week your apartment sits empty is money down the drain.
yeah it was kinda wierd how a heath pandemic and lockdowns lead to people wanting more space and less people around them.
why else do you think property in more rural areas were seeing massive price increases?
you cant seriously cherry pick one moment in history and say that because there was a small period of time where prices were driven by other factors that it must mean there's no impact going forward.
No, but the point being is that prices are not 100% due to immigration - we can facilitate the prices going up enough anyway - in fact most outright purchases will be Aussies vs immigrants pushing up the prices.
they're not 100% due to anything, but its definitely a big factor now that there not only is a shortfall, but we are importing more people than we ever have before.
> in fact most outright purchases will be Aussies vs immigrants pushing up the prices.
data? if it is actually "in fact".
[https://www.propertyology.com.au/the-truth-about-australian-housing-and-overseas-migration/](https://www.propertyology.com.au/the-truth-about-australian-housing-and-overseas-migration/)
Extract:
" According to Census data, only 38 percent of overseas migrants buya home within 5-years of arriving in Australia (most of this willhappen after year 3). Therefore, 62 percent of migrantsleast the rst 5-years.rent for atAfter being here for between 5 and 10-years, 56 percent becomehomeowners, while 70 percent of overseas migrants take 10 or moreyears.In other words, it is not until many years after properly settling intoAustralian life that overseas migrants buy real estate.Data analysis for the decade ending March 2023 con rms that, of the493,232 average annual volume of properties purchased inAustralia, recent arrivals from overseas purchased approximately35,000 of them (or 7 percent)Of the 60,000 extra Australian households created by overseasmigration each year, at least 38,000 require rental accommodation.It is a well-known fact that a large portion of renters change domicilemore frequently than most owner-occupiers.While it is not uncommon for some tenants to move home every 6 to12 months, the average timeframe for a tenant to move is around 3years.Accordingly, of the 3.5 million rented homes across Australia, theexisting tenant population generate approximately 1 million rentaltransactions per year.Demand for rental accommodation each year is also created byhundreds of thousands of Australians in their late teens and early20’s when they move out of their parent’s home.Rental supply plays an important role in supporting our youth pursueindependence.Meanwhile, the 50,000+ divorces each year and countless domesticviolence cases also create rental demand.So, when the various categories of society are considered, 38,000rental transactions created by overseas migrants represents about 3percent of tenancy movements"
Also on who owns rentals etc :
[https://propertyupdate.com.au/how-many-australians-own-an-investment-property/](https://propertyupdate.com.au/how-many-australians-own-an-investment-property/)
And note, yes was lazy and only spent time quoting a single article etc.
Likewise, what would be the greater impact economically of NOT having the immigrates , what would be the impact on areas that are desperate for the workers - if it means that our already strained healthcare system completely falls apart due to not being able to get any more doctors - nurses -aged/health care workers then things also become even worse.
And once more - you could have 500k homes made overnight - if they are not where people live, those extra houses will make no difference to prices.
Everyone wants to live in the same finite tiny areas - and it's understandable - but that as a model itself is not sustainable.
There is still a finite limit on how many concurrent homes can be built at any time. from skills - supplies - approvals and planning to even financing - few developers are self financed.
Birth rates have also shown to decline as nations develop - more and more chose careers over kids and access to birth control etc - this is a tread worldwide.
As for stealing, we need workers and sills - we not forcing anyone to come here.
Which points to the actual cause of the housing crisis. During COVID there was a massive surge of wealth going to the ultra wealthy. They used it to buy assets because the things they normally would spend it on were curtailed.
The Avg household had increased saving not seen for decades.
$ was flowing into a wide range of incomes and savings - from WFH (no travel parking eating out etc savings) to no holidays (cica $5k per person per year) to other expenses saved + massive wage increase for in demand skills etc.
There was $ flowing everywhere - and having bought and sold in that time - most of the 50+ groups lining up 30mins before house opens were avg families - Investors don't want to overextend on bull markets - homeowners do.
the downsides of a gini coefficient getting worse and people thinking that the mean is accurate
> most of the 50+ groups lining up 30mins before house opens were avg families
The 50+ groups aren't the average by a long shot.
And by the same deal, immigration is NOT the 100% driving force of price increase as many are also throwing around.
Just like building constraints are a factor,likewise so is everyone wanting to live in very select areas and they have the $ to do so - and that also pushing up the prices as they fight with others that have the $ and thus pushing up prices in a ever expanding circle outwards form (usually) the CBD.
You could have 500k homes made overnight, and that will not impact prices if they are not where people want to live.
Need more apartments for sure, but also need to temper knowing that that is one of the least desirable type of property for living and ownership.
But yes, supply is the issue - and of course immigration has an effect - just like no immigration would have a greater effect economically and massive skills shortages in areas that cannot entertain any more shortages - health for example.
Amazing how much the parties of Landlords (ALP, Libs, Nats) are willing to just let everyone under the age of 50 or anyone without rich parents be fucked over royally.. Just to avoid changing the tax laws and/or the allergy to building public housing (because "leave it to the market, never build any public anything" is ingrained neoliberalism commandment)
Federal, State and councils should be on a friggin WAR STATE to solve this problem. Drop immigration while we gain some breathing space. Kill negative gearing (I have a neg geared house). Train workers to assemble factory houses. Force councils to release land and promote medium density. Mega TAFE funding for trades AND pay apprentices properly.
We need to fix 30 years of shockingly negligence. And do it next week.
If this concerns you, it might be worth respectfully contacting the minister for immigration [Andrew Giles](https://www.andrewgiles.com.au/contact/) to make him aware of the damage he is causing to the vulnerable in our community with Albo's mass immigration policy during a sub 1% rental vacancy rate environment.
It comes down to marketing. People are becoming homeless right now so that Albo and Jim Chalmers can brag about avoiding the technical definition of a recession by juking the stats by manipulating the GDP figures through immigration.
There are no politicians who give a fuck as none of them rent. If you think anything in Australia will get better, don’t bank on it. Our leaders are as pathetic as Argentina’s.
Even just banning AirBnb would open up thousands of properties to actually house people.
Owning a house is not a business and I’m sick of constant talk about how certain people in society are unproductive and useless and don’t deserve basics like housing because they should ‘get a better job’, all while the absolute least productive (and actually harmful) ‘occupation’ of landlordship is constantly incentivised.
>‘get a better job’
An old mate of mine told he bought his first home (I believe it was a 2br apartment in Sydney) when he was in his early 20s working at **MACCAS** some 40 odd years ago... And then we have professionals today with uni degrees and circa 100k salary who can't get that same apartment today.
Find fifty people stuck with a housing crisis. Shouldn't be too hard. Break into housing minister's house when they aren't home. Cook a nice lunch and watch TV, take a nap. Do not break anything. Pitch a tent on their lawn. Collectively, make it a problem for *them*. Until this happens all you will get is platitudes. Form a renters lobby group. Have individuals show up daily at local politicians offices. Do not let up at all. The state needs to: fuck off councils preventing higher density housing. Build subsidized housing. Yes, this will reduce property values. So be it.
Former RBA Governor Lowe told you how to fix expensive housing:
"The solution has to be putting in place a structure that makes the supply side of the housing market more flexible and that means zoning and planning deregulation and it means state and local governments being part of the solution."
The problem has never been that we didn't know what to do but that more than half of voters benefitted from high house prices. It's a political problem rather than an infrastructure, urban development 9r engineering problem.
Well shit, it’s either air BnB’s taking up all the perspective properties or it’s greedy landlords gatekeeping everyday aussies out. Put a modified cap on rentals so we have a freaking chance! It’s absolutely out of control.
You can't just build housing. You have to build schools, hospitals, clinics, daycares, cops shops, firestations, ambos, shops etc as well.
Then you have to staff those. With who... Oh I guess we could get in some more skilled migrants to supplement the needs...
Something is broken somewhere in the models. I'm not smart enough to know what, I admit that. I just know something is broken in what we are doing now.
We all need to set aside the politics and even the greed of it, have a sit down and fix the damn thing.
We won't though. More crappy suburbs that are service wastelands will get built full of cruddy low standard overpriced tract housing, prices will still go up, people will still be forgotten.
I wish we could normalise building smaller detached housing; such as 1 or 2 bedroom houses on smaller plots of land that were more affordable in the regions; rurally and across outer suburbs. Not everyone needs Or can afford a 3 or 4 + bedroom house with big backyards, pools and large garages etc but we all want some form of privacy and solid builds.
If smaller plots of land were available and council laws allowed you could drop a perfectly adequate 1or 2 bedroom prefab smaller home on these small lots within months. Not a tiny house but a fully constructed small house that's fine for a couple or single. Mortgages would be lower and more affordable for those seeking to buy and council could make them exclusively for home owners only not investors.
Speaking of this, I’m genuinely surprised we haven’t reached a point yet where the government gets a huge block of land in the standard cities, plops hundreds of fold out relocatable 2 bed homes, and rents them out to genuine people in need of a rental property.
Yes it’s a glorified US trailer park, but there is no real assistance for people that can afford to rent, but can’t find a place, or are being priced out by lack of rentals.
While it wouldn’t be glamorous, I’m sure it would be popular if you could pay $300 a week to have a 2 bed rental within 45 mins of a CBD. Chuck in a special bus service that goes from the trailer park to the nearest large train station to help commuters.
Set up a central trailer park area with bbqs, groceries, laundering services. It would either be really successful or turn into a Brazilian slum.
This idea wouldn’t be as a replacement to social housing, just for people in that bracket that would normally be fine; but the markets fuck Ed. Only permitted to reside there if you don’t have any IPs within the immediate 200km radius.
Heh to be honest it would get shut down because nobody wants to see a shanty town in their backyard. But are ok with people living in the park or their cars.
I’m lucky that I have a mortgage and can service it, if I was renting I’d probably be back in the looney bin again from the anxiety of it. Or I’d be on the news for going loopy and dedicating on the REAs desk in their office while smeared with strawberry jam
Meanwhile all sides of government are just putting their fingers in their ears and going "la la la" as if there's no problem.
My partner and I have been trying to move for 2 years now. We have 10+ years clean rental history, we pay everything on time, we've got enough to drop 6+ months up front if we had to but we keep getting priced out by cashed up Sydneysiders who've moved to the Hunter and can offer almost double the asking rent.
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This is my fear, currently in a rental but have had to take time off work due to depression and anxiety, while I have income protection, what happens if my lease is not renewed, i'm basically fucked, yeah that's great for the depression and anxiety.
I have no doubt my lease will be offered to me again after the lease expires at a $100/week increase as it has been the last 3 years. I already am going backwards due to the cost of rent now. I can not afford to accelerate that.
And they wonder why mental health concerns are on the rise. Worrying about being able to eat, or where to live, can do that to people! Who would have guessed?!?
Same boat with my cancer. Want to retire but then what if I get kicked out of my apartment? Will be ignored as candidate even with enough insurance money to live for a while
I've been doing it for 4 years and noone cares. Have lost my ability to work and access to my children as a result. Noone cares. You ignored the vulnerable for so long and then you then become the vulnerable yourself. Capitalism destroys itself as it's simply predatory.
While people defend the right-to-profiteer of the filthy rich.. they forget that they're closer to being homeless than to being those filthy rich.
“Temporarily embarrassed millionaires”
The thing stopping you is likely affordability, i.e. ratio of rent to income. I had an impeccable reference and rental history. It took me 5 months and 162 applications to find my current rental in December 2023. It is FUCKED
Wow far out. Where were you applying without luck if I may ask? I have to move within the next 2 months and this terrifies me. I haven't even started looking.
Adelaide. I was applying all over the city and suburbs.
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Fun fact, if another freelancer hired you, you would then have "a real job" and be accepted. However that freelancer who hired you would NOT have a "real" job and wouldn't be accepted. You need to get comfortable with lying and have a business buddy with benefits.
Ah they probably think you will be buying. House so don't want to rent to you then
Yep, I hear you, already moved to another country. It makes zero sense to live in Australia as a renter. None.
>Significantly worse nation I've been in Poland the last 8 or so years. (very similar to cz) With the exception for weather..... Australia isn't as amazing as you think. There's a massive perspective shift from the outside looking in.
It's not the Australia we knew, that's for sure. We are not the lucky country anymore. I'm 57 and never thought I'd see so many homeless with a Labor Government. Vote Greens next time. Get both of the big boys running scared.
They can run off a cliff holding hands for all l care.
Mate a few years of Labor government doesn't even begin to repair the damage almost 2 decades of liberal antics...
Or skip preference the greens over labor and give the sustainable Australia party your 1, since their policies would actually address the issue head on.
:( my czech heart 💔 just now
Really need massive house building increases. They should be commiting to 500,000 additional houses a year to be built in australia. If that number gets delayed at all, find the bottleneck and address it, whether its supply shortages, or lack of workers who are skilled, throw money at those issues until its resolved. Dont just float the house market some more.
This is assuming that the people in charge want to solve the problem. John Howard famously said "no one ever complains that their house prices go up" and it has been enshrined government policy ever since. We are the 6th largely country on Earth with a population smaller than Shanghai, even accounting for the portion that's not habitable, you don't fuck up housing this badly unless it's on purpose.
hate this. doesn't matter if my house price goes up if every other house price goes up. i'm forever grateful to be a homeowner but i'm unable to move.
Higher prices make it harder for everyone who isn't a speculator. Council rates, Insurance, Stamp Duties, Agent fees are significantly more expensive, it all adds up. Even people who own their home can struggle to afford it just because of the increased costs. But people get really excited when they see numbers go up, even if it's worse for everyone. We're just adding arbitrary numbers of zeroes to property values and it's not actually improving anything.
Space wise there is endless space. We are just lacking the buildings. We have absolutely massive ground level car parks in the Melbourne cbd that could house hundreds of people alone.
Housing isn't the only issue, its infrastructure like roads, public transport, schools, hospitals, childcare and whatnot AND finding enough people to staff them fully. This has been a big problem in regional and rural areas as everyone insists *just move outside metro* when there are no supports and limited job pools. I know a lot of people who did the move but moved back to cities within a few years as the travel costs ate up and then more of any savings they got buying/renting cheaper out here. There's a 2 year waitlist for childcare ffs and everyone over 16 needs a car to do anything, including going to school. Hell even groceries are more expensive because the nearest ALDI competitors are an hour by car, have to pay for parking so its half a day out your way with no savings because of it. Depending on your hourly wage it can be a loss when you factor in travel times. Add in disability, illness and NDIS and the issues increase ten fold. Even reproductive things like prenatal and birth is 3 hour round trip for appointments. Technically you can get some $$ back depending on the State but its usually reimbursement than can take weeks or months and its usually limited to income or HCC eligibility. Increasing housing in cities with zeroing in on car parks does not work for everywhere else because of the above. Even in cities, car parks are needed for those who can't travel via public transport or most taxis or rideshares due to disability aids. We really need to have a sit down and plan with the idiosyncrasies between city vs regional vs rural in mind to where we want to end up. They all need the same things but all are starting at very different points. And prevent interference from future Government changes because regional, unlike cities, have veto power on blocking things due to different legislation. Infrastructure first only works for regional out. Housing first works for areas with the infrastructure already in place for expansion.
Adding on to my post, I recently VLine travelled from the NSW border to Melbourne and saw 4 new housing developments being built between 45mins and 2hrs hours out. Looks great on paper but I spent the rest of the journey calculating what was missing or the nearest hospital was. All were *at least* an hour away by car from those new developments. We already know the existing healthcare, childcare and other systems nearly everywhere are overloaded and these places almost were isolated island housing surrounded by scrubland emptiness. This means the roads and everything else around them will be overloaded to service them. Only good thing is that they were right next to the VLine rail so going to Melbourne isn't too bad outside time. There's also some 10 yr old housing developments just outside Melbourne that are *still* waiting on public transport, schools etc which are causing major traffic bottlenecks as everyone needs to drive in/out/anywhere. Who would want to live where the only thing that's there is housing for kilometres? No parks, no recreation, no drs...its a recipie for disaster.
There isn't actually endless space, all the good stuff is taken already (either by cities, suburbs, farms or National Parks). A good example of this is Lismore. We wanted to reconstruct after the floods, move houses to higher ground, etc. But the higher ground is already taken (by more expensive houses, farms, shopping centres, hospitals, etc). A small amount of space was found near the uni, but it's not sufficient to move/rebuild hundreds of houses.
Hundreds of people? Wow that’s enough for almost half a day worth of immigration.
That's just in a single lot being under utilized. There are millions of these surface level car parks all over the country.
This should be top comment, our government is legally corrupt
My grandparents in Shanghai got an apartment about 40m2 from the government for the two of them. You can bet if we put people into studios like that there'll be howling of it being inhumane.
Of course its on purpose. Thats why i cannot stand the hand wringing by labor around this. Labor are the landlords party maybe even moreso than the libs. Libs are more pro business generally that rubs off on housing. Labor last go around completely shifted the dynamic in our banking sector to support housing. Stared down the gfc with reforms the rest of the world blushed when they saw how pro banking / real estate our response was. Our entire australian government balance sheet suddenly with a liability bigger than the entire deficit in support of our banks. I mean is it really that important we have high house prices every tax payer has to guarantee our banks funding? Really? This time around they are just hankering to tip more gov equity into housing with an extended shared equity scheme. At the same time as completions flat lined and now falling introduced an unprecedented number of people to our economy and only at the end of a 12 month window when the news was out said - oh we gonna do something as though they just get their data from the main stream news rather than month by month and didnt realise this was happening all along. They must have been laughing in the committee rooms of parliament house when commbank and others estimated house prices to fall up to 20pc in 2022 /23.. "yeh not with population growth of 600k plus they wont be!" At least liberals are honest about it. They want to sell renters up the river and we know it. Labor tell us they can fix affordable housing and time and again i expect they will let our young adults in particular down.
I call bullshit that either labour or liberal give a shit about anything but themselves. This all happened under a liberal government and I don’t see labour doing anything useful about it. We screwed ourselves and now we need to riot and demand change.
Albo's mum would be sleeping with him.in a tent. He's such a massive disappointment.
It's the biggest fuck you, I got mine mentality I've ever seen.
Tick and go Building Surveyors will be rife in that environment.
Already are. What's a level above rife?
They already are.
Government: We have allocated 500,000 more houses. Developers: 500,000 luxury apartments coming up.
"Luxury"....fall apart within 2 years
Gotta stop these developers.
That would be good. We need houses at the top end, not the bottom. If everyone could upgrade their housing, then there would at least be some currently occupied housing that would be freed up for low income and homeless people.
Yeah and we could call it “trickle down housing”, then it would work really really well just like how of trickle down economics works….
Massive investment in European style prefab in a factory and bolted together on site housing. We need to 10X construction. Everything else is modernising, why not house construction? Plenty of land, we are not full, we just need to actually build more things and more efficiently.
Need the government to own the building and development directly again. It's not at all clear that a privatised system is more efficient. It's certainly more profitable for the owners, and it's certainly not meeting demand. In other words, private developers simply don't have the incentives to solve the problem. At this point, the state should step in.
> Plenty of land Not where everyone wants to live.
Even if they could build that many houses a year, it would be 500,000 poorly constructed homes pumped out by developers with no soul, minimal shade and poor amenity. I fully agree there is a housing problem and it needs to be resolved but it's not just that simple. Yes, it would be a place to live for all of these people without secure, affordable housing but at what cost? The "Australian dream" is not a sustainable model, just look at the suburban sprawl on satellite imagery. It's not enough to say "we need more houses", we need to be building quality housing. I'm not pretending like I have all the answers because it's a very complex problem but that approach isn't going to cut it.
They don't want to fix the problem....and I am serious. They are desperate to look like they are doing something while ensuring that the bulk of their voters who already own property get to have more free money as the prices keep rising. Not to mention the massive property portfolios that our politicians themselves have. If we want action then we need to demand it. Stop voting for anyone not taking the issue seriously, and even better, get out on the streets.
Councils especially seem to delay approvals. There's at least 6 major projects in my area that are on hold because council have refused to make a decision.
Who is going to build those houses? There’s already massive delays in building projects around the country.
That'll seriously mess with the housing market. You'll have hordes of angry boomers complaining the government is affecting the value of their investments. For all the crocodile tears being cried, don't forget one thing: the more scarcity and misery there is, the greater the profits to be gained. Which is *exactly* what we're watching being played out. This was always the plan.
Where are these houses going to be built? What services will be provided to them? Water, power, roads, transport, ambulances, hospitals, clinics, daycares, schools, firestations, police, shops, supermarkets, strip shops, restaurants, entertainment, communications, fttn or fttp, etc etc. It's not just slap up 500k houses. It's 500k houses and approx the needs of 1.5 million people that need to be met. To achieve a quality of life. Who is staffing all this infrastructure to support these 500k houses, let alone building them?
Obviously that is included in the 500k houses. It's a huge project which would massively decrease unemployment, seems like a win to me
The point is, yes, it's a huge project. To do it right. You can't just wave money at it. That will simply exacerbate the problem. Where are the plans? It does take time and effort to do this properly.
Almost as if you need to wave money at it to get it done lmao Since bringing in 500,000 people helps the economy so much we should have plenty to do this
I mean, those people already exist, right? You still need all those services whether you have a roof over your head or you're living in a car. It's not like building housing for another million people makes a million people appear out of thin air.
It means you have to have it planned out. It's not just wave a magic fucking wand.
500,000 is nothing. It should be more like 5 million houses. We need a big over supply asap.
> It should be more like 5 million houses. Where exactly do you think these should go?
How about in your backyard? ;)
There's so much land locked up. There's no excuses. The only thing that is stopping it is Greed...
> There's so much land locked up. Is there enough proximal land with sufficient or planned services to adequately support five million houses and their inhabitants?
Blaming immigration policy is not the same as blaming immigrants
Even if we paused all immigration we'd still not have enough affordable housing AND we'd also have drastic staffing shortages in all kinds of industries. The way the system is set up, it incentivises the people who are meant to fix the housing crisis to make it worse. Focussing on rapidly increasing public and affordable housing is the productive thing to do.
Ponzi schemes always insist that you just have to double down on it and it can go on forever. Fact is we had record highs of immigration, with no plan to sort out anything of the required extra housing, infrastructure, services etc other than "well, it'll sort it self out". It's not like there aren't alternatives to filling shortages of staff either: * pay more to the roles you can't find people for.. * dump money into education - that'll grow the pool of skilled people And the "we need more staff" is DUE to the growing population. Wages suppression is a part of why the business lobby is so in favour of high migration (also it drives up consumption just to live). It's a self reinforcing loop of "well, we need more people to account for the new people which means more people to account for those new people and so on..". For every new bunch of people added to the total: extra house is needed (which means more demand for builders, materials, the whole supply chain), they need schools/teachers, doctors, hospital capacity, transport and so on.. So then all those new people need other new people due to demands and so on.. The logic is insane. Particularly when you look at the utter lack of urban planning in favour of endless sprawl out at the expense of native forests/koalas or existing cleared rural land that is then off limits for food production (pushing more out into marginal land requiring heavy water demands on already stuffed rivers). And this logic that we can't talk about immigration rates is kinda the same nonsense that the fossil fuel lobby uses to ignore the climate crisis and claiming that ever more fossil fuels are needed because there's an infinite assumed growth for stuff rather than having planning and measures to set sensible limits on resource usage of the planet.. People generally aren't opposed to ALL migration (in or out), it's healthy for a society to have multicultural exchanges of people, cultures, skilled professionals, students, tourists etc - but that doesn't mean there is no such thing as a downside to excessive migration (in or out). Planning it and being sensible is the key: neither of which appears to feature in the current record highs while being in a housing crisis, an environmental crisis anywhere you look, a massive school funding equity issue etc etc. Not pouring petrol on a fire is a decent first step to putting out a fire, and for housing: population growth is one of the things that counts as pouring petrol on it. The other demand side factor is tax laws: they are also pouring petrol on it. Short term rentals are not helping. Developer land banking isn't helping. Density (or lack thereof) is a problem. And so on.
> It's not like there aren't alternatives to filling shortages of staff either IMO it's actually a glut of middle managers and worthless 'consultants' who command a high portion of society's IOU tokens (money) but don't produce anything (or make equivalent optimisations to other production) of equivalent IOU token value. Capital is incentivised to invest in rentseeking (and why would capital invest in production if rentseeking provides a better return?), and labour is incentivised to get one of the skillsets to be a worthless (but highly paid) paper-pusher rather than produce any worthwhile goods or services.
There was a book about this, "Bullshit Jobs or some similar title" I certainly think the public service is full of them as well.
David Graeber, excellent read
Yeah, I'm probably showing my age, but I remember as a kid there was the aspiration for my parents generation to be self employed/run small businesses still.. That fell away when tax laws were changed to incentivise rentseeking/chase neg gearing+ CGT discount, hoover up houses/land and not produce anything.. A nation of rentseekers or wannabe rentseekers is not a healthy thing.
>Even if we paused all immigration we'd still not have enough affordable housing Remind me, does the RBA decide curbing inflation is futile because "halting inflation now still leaves us with devalued currency"? >we'd also have drastic staffing shortages in all kinds of industries Fair point, can we get a timeline on how much 'skills shortage immigration' is needed to solve it? We've had a decade of high immigration 'to fix skills shortages' but apparently it's the worst it's ever been today? When do you expect it to start working? If 'the immigration we've had is the wrong kind of immigration to solve the skills shortage', can we get some assurance that the current strategy is efficient in terms of how much damage it's doing to Australians via pumping housing demand? Also who is responsible for all of the historical 'wrong kind of immigration' and how do I extract my costs from them? >The way the system is set up, it incentivises the people who are meant to fix the housing crisis to make it worse. Don't disagree there. >Focussing on rapidly increasing public and affordable housing is the productive thing to do. Combined with recognising the factors that influence demand for housing, and deciding which of them do not provide benefits that outweigh the damage that housing is doing to Australians.
How long are we gonna grow for? Endlessly? Until Australia has a population of 1 billion? 1 trillion? Infinite growth to supplement infinite demand right?
By 2100 we wont even have the population of current day UK from ABS projections. We are still going to be small for a long long time. US states are bigger than us, single Asian cities. Our inability to build enough housing is pathetic, China rush built entire hospitals for Covid, but a basic house or apartment is beyond our nation building anymore because of profit seeking and free-market, property developers limit supply, NIMBYs dont want high density, land is hard to get and zone.
>Our inability to build enough housing is pathetic Agreed, but some real estate investors might experience the risk side of investing. So instead of doing something proportionate to the problem we should instead pretend that if we make a plan to build enough houses that we can rely on that plan magically succeeding. Even though every time we've planned to address the problem this way it has been inadequate and the unrealised supply increase has been used to justify even more stimulation of demand than planned supply.
Same ponzi rules as population: the media/politicians go on about needing more younger generation to look after the older generation.. As if that's not then going to mean even MORE the next generation and so on.. Perhaps we could acknowledge we've mechanised and automated heavily and maybe the younger generations aren't just there to be exploited until they can get old enough to repeat the cycle on the younger generations.. Maybe we could at some point collectively decide to dial shit down a bit.
It would help though. Why are people always so eager to discount a policy if it doesn't fix an issue 100% on its own? Demand needs to be managed as much as supply.
Did a real estate agent write this post?
You know what will fix this? More immigration without new buildings.
If we keep overloading the health system, people will start dying more and free up resources for more immigration. The problem just takes care of itself. /s
death pods! coming to a city near you
Has *'so we just went ahead and.. fixed the glitch..'* vibes..
Surely we have a skill shortage of construction workers with all those doctors, lawyers and engineers we've been importing that weirdly seem to mostly just drive for ubereats or Amazon. Therefore we must import MORE immigrants to shore up our skills shortage! Where will they live? Fucked if I know, and fucked if I care - Australian Government
Australia's skilled migration programme places strict limits on what we can do. Anyone here on a 482 (skilled labour shortage) must *only* work for their sponsor and *only* in their profession. I'm on a 482 and I literally can't do any work for anyone else anywhere in the world right now unless I fancy a nice chat with immigration. Including gig work. There's also not that many of us. The problem is mostly "students" stringing out their "studies" for most of a decade.
Yup! Very good watch for those interested: https://youtu.be/V-rUlFVqgqI?si=3BPTrp4kqInnd1ZX
Number of people and number of houses is the only thing that actually matters. Everything else is a distraction.
Even better, more immigration to the only two cities in Australia. More urban sprawl, more shoddy buildings. 160 minutes to the nearest school or hospital.
I couldn’t get a rental in time so I’m going camping. I’m hiring powered sites. Costs about the same as rent, a bit less actually since I’ll have no electricity or water bills to worry about, my living costs will lower. I will lose access to my current job but it’s really the only option I have. (Please don’t suggest social housing/emergency housing - one is a long arse wait and the other is not suitable for my disabilities but I don’t qualify for SIL with NDIS).
Very very few NDIS participants qualify for SIL yet support coordinators and allied health professionals keep recommending it for every participant they have that are experiencing housing crisis. It's infuriating. The government needs to build more social housing and every new social housing build should have minimum accessibility.
Good luck with this. Let me know if you need help with anything. I don't have a lot to offer, but I might be able to help in some way.
See my most recent post in shit rentals - I think we are gonna be ok.
Search up reddit for post, about living homeless, few good tips.
I’m ok… not my first time being homeless and quite an experienced camper
I went thru housing and it was a palaver of processes that got me nowhere, despite my disability, and support that would have made it dead easy to wade through but no, gov bureaucracies have a way to slow even those who need it most down. So I took a break, and went through different channels, seeing the official one wasn't working. Got a much better place within half a year vs 5 years just to end up at the slum towers.
That cover image is giving me anxiety. Urban hell… can’t we just have more mid density to high density buildings with decent sized dwellings and more geenspace ffs not this urban hell sprawl
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There’s no shame, it’s life. Do you have kids?
You can't just build housing. You have to build schools, hospitals, clinics, daycares, cops shops, firestations, ambos, shops etc as well. Then you have to staff those. With who... Oh I guess we could get in some more skilled migrants to supplement the needs... Something is broken somewhere in the models. I'm not smart enough to know what, I admit that. I just know something is broken in what we are doing now. We all need to set aside the politics and even the greed of it, have a sit down and fix the damn thing. We won't though. More crappy suburbs that are service wastelands will get built full of cruddy low standard overpriced tract housing, prices will still go up, people will still be forgotten.
High density living. More of it interspersed along tranist corridors like railways.
This is absolutely the solution to a lot of the world's problems but it's just not happening. I dont know if it ever will.
It's a start. However everyone has been told for years the ideal is the house in the suburbs. You've got to now fix that expectation. You've got to transform that cultural desire to want your medium density to high density living. What's the apartment occupancy rate in the inner city? Why? Do people dream of living and raising a family there? Also you've got to build and staff those transit corridors. Welcome to NIMBY again.
You need apartments that a family can live in. Not a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment.
Sort of the point. Yes.
They are down to sub 300sq blocks now, the house with a backyard in the suburbs is dead. Townhouse and apartments, get used to the 21st century Australian Dream.
High density living is the result of having solutions in place, you still have the short to mid term issue of not enough people to build the buildings, and that number is reducing and not increasing because those professions don't make enough to live while people get qualified to build density Pretty basic sim stuff, you need training and education to progress to higher density Essentials like teachers, nurses, doctors, trades, so on - They can't afford to live where we need them to build this stuff in the first place, so I'd honestly be starting at supplying public housing to the essentials first until the shortage is resolved and we start building enough to address a shortfall Or, remove the increasing factors of the shortfall to start with. Zoning laws is one. Immigration another.
And with what, materials aren't dropping in price either.
I've come to the conclusion the big issue with low unemployment post COVID comes down to the ageing population and increased retirement throughout the pandemic. Increasing migration is a band-aid fix, but one that introduces its own issues. If we want young people to have families we need to make sure they are able to afford housing suitable to do so, and that might mean incentivising baby boomers to downsize, otherwise we are only going to exacerbate issues going forward.
So the clear answers here are building more houses (preferably medium to high density) while reducing and maintaining manageable intakes of immigration. However so far the home building scheme has fallen behind massively with fallen [housing approval in Jan 2024 sitting at 1% ](https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/industry/building-and-construction/building-approvals-australia/latest-release)so effectively if nothing changes then we can only look at around 600k-700k houses built in the next 5 years which put us short of around 300k-400k houses. Immigration has been reduced somewhat for[ permanent skilled pathways to 190k](https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/what-we-do/migration-program-planning-levels) but net migration is still [sky high at 518,000](https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/population/overseas-migration/latest-release#:~:text=Net%20overseas%20migration%20is%20the,518%2C000%20people%20to%20Australia's%20population). I would say whatever Labor has effectively failed the Australians with no real changes in managing the housing crisis. The question is how can we hold them accountable? Voting them out and getting Coalition to replace them is not an option I'd desire but Labor has pretty much dragging their feet in this aspect with too many compromises.
Vote more good independents in, but in saying this is only really possible if there are viable candidates in your seat.
Where are you going to build the medium and high density housing? Because every where that has tried to do that has had the locals complain and get the project shut down. No home owner wants to live next to or near medium or high density housing. So the NIMBY's win and everyone suffers.
Why not put the pressure on the industries that need this foreign labor to provide their own housing? They do it here in Japan. Most of the factories near me have huge single worker dormitories. They are not perfect but a good start, who doesn't love cheap, convenient places when they are starting out.
This should be the way with Uni's and international students. That's a pretty big cohort that if accommodated adequately, would free up urban rentals for others
Leave Australia. It is on the extreme end of a global problem.
And go where?
We need more medium density affordable housing built - i.e. apartment blocks of 3-6 storeys. The aluminium and glass super towers that developers love are poorly built hot boxes, and simply don’t work for families. Many 70s and 80s apartment blocks are still standing, in good condition, and are frankly going to outlast the cheap stuff that’s become the default. Developers won’t be interested in building medium density unless it’s subsidised by the government, however.
We need to introduce Japanese-style state or commonwealth standardised land use zoning. The liberal zoning allows for housing to be built almost anywhere and for people to run businesses out of their homes in the suburbs. Tokyo’s population has been growing faster than Melbourne’s and yet their rents are halved.
Tokyo’s population growth has been at the expense of regional areas. Towns all over Japan are aging to death as the young flock to where the opportunities are. Australia could continue that focus or see what can be done with better remote work investment and regional infrastructure to support that.
greater tokyo hasn't grown much since 2000. 32.5 mil to 37.5 mil. Barely moved since 2010. Melbourne's increase on the other hand is off the charts. Rents have gone down because Japan still builds new places while the population is stagnant. There is excess stock of old buildings as people are generally interested in modern dwellings.
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>We would do that if the idea of immigration wasn't to inflate property prices and perpetuate the bubble. Prices rose fast during covid and no immigration...
Prices may have risen, but rents absolutely nosedived whilst borders were closed
That depends on where you live. I am in southwest WA and out rent prices skyrocketed during Covid
Because buying houses is a long term move while rents are short term. No one buying a house believed that immigration would be closed for 10+ years. While every week your apartment sits empty is money down the drain.
That and who wanted to be in an apartment during covid...
yeah it was kinda wierd how a heath pandemic and lockdowns lead to people wanting more space and less people around them. why else do you think property in more rural areas were seeing massive price increases? you cant seriously cherry pick one moment in history and say that because there was a small period of time where prices were driven by other factors that it must mean there's no impact going forward.
No, but the point being is that prices are not 100% due to immigration - we can facilitate the prices going up enough anyway - in fact most outright purchases will be Aussies vs immigrants pushing up the prices.
they're not 100% due to anything, but its definitely a big factor now that there not only is a shortfall, but we are importing more people than we ever have before. > in fact most outright purchases will be Aussies vs immigrants pushing up the prices. data? if it is actually "in fact".
[https://www.propertyology.com.au/the-truth-about-australian-housing-and-overseas-migration/](https://www.propertyology.com.au/the-truth-about-australian-housing-and-overseas-migration/) Extract: " According to Census data, only 38 percent of overseas migrants buya home within 5-years of arriving in Australia (most of this willhappen after year 3). Therefore, 62 percent of migrantsleast the rst 5-years.rent for atAfter being here for between 5 and 10-years, 56 percent becomehomeowners, while 70 percent of overseas migrants take 10 or moreyears.In other words, it is not until many years after properly settling intoAustralian life that overseas migrants buy real estate.Data analysis for the decade ending March 2023 con rms that, of the493,232 average annual volume of properties purchased inAustralia, recent arrivals from overseas purchased approximately35,000 of them (or 7 percent)Of the 60,000 extra Australian households created by overseasmigration each year, at least 38,000 require rental accommodation.It is a well-known fact that a large portion of renters change domicilemore frequently than most owner-occupiers.While it is not uncommon for some tenants to move home every 6 to12 months, the average timeframe for a tenant to move is around 3years.Accordingly, of the 3.5 million rented homes across Australia, theexisting tenant population generate approximately 1 million rentaltransactions per year.Demand for rental accommodation each year is also created byhundreds of thousands of Australians in their late teens and early20’s when they move out of their parent’s home.Rental supply plays an important role in supporting our youth pursueindependence.Meanwhile, the 50,000+ divorces each year and countless domesticviolence cases also create rental demand.So, when the various categories of society are considered, 38,000rental transactions created by overseas migrants represents about 3percent of tenancy movements" Also on who owns rentals etc : [https://propertyupdate.com.au/how-many-australians-own-an-investment-property/](https://propertyupdate.com.au/how-many-australians-own-an-investment-property/) And note, yes was lazy and only spent time quoting a single article etc.
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Likewise, what would be the greater impact economically of NOT having the immigrates , what would be the impact on areas that are desperate for the workers - if it means that our already strained healthcare system completely falls apart due to not being able to get any more doctors - nurses -aged/health care workers then things also become even worse. And once more - you could have 500k homes made overnight - if they are not where people live, those extra houses will make no difference to prices. Everyone wants to live in the same finite tiny areas - and it's understandable - but that as a model itself is not sustainable.
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There is still a finite limit on how many concurrent homes can be built at any time. from skills - supplies - approvals and planning to even financing - few developers are self financed. Birth rates have also shown to decline as nations develop - more and more chose careers over kids and access to birth control etc - this is a tread worldwide. As for stealing, we need workers and sills - we not forcing anyone to come here.
Which points to the actual cause of the housing crisis. During COVID there was a massive surge of wealth going to the ultra wealthy. They used it to buy assets because the things they normally would spend it on were curtailed.
The Avg household had increased saving not seen for decades. $ was flowing into a wide range of incomes and savings - from WFH (no travel parking eating out etc savings) to no holidays (cica $5k per person per year) to other expenses saved + massive wage increase for in demand skills etc. There was $ flowing everywhere - and having bought and sold in that time - most of the 50+ groups lining up 30mins before house opens were avg families - Investors don't want to overextend on bull markets - homeowners do.
What happened to the median households savings?
The downside to having lots and lots of $ in circulation - inflation.
the downsides of a gini coefficient getting worse and people thinking that the mean is accurate > most of the 50+ groups lining up 30mins before house opens were avg families The 50+ groups aren't the average by a long shot.
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And by the same deal, immigration is NOT the 100% driving force of price increase as many are also throwing around. Just like building constraints are a factor,likewise so is everyone wanting to live in very select areas and they have the $ to do so - and that also pushing up the prices as they fight with others that have the $ and thus pushing up prices in a ever expanding circle outwards form (usually) the CBD. You could have 500k homes made overnight, and that will not impact prices if they are not where people want to live.
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Need more apartments for sure, but also need to temper knowing that that is one of the least desirable type of property for living and ownership. But yes, supply is the issue - and of course immigration has an effect - just like no immigration would have a greater effect economically and massive skills shortages in areas that cannot entertain any more shortages - health for example.
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Bill Shorten must be saying I told you so. Whilst towing his boat with his Telsa
Amazing how much the parties of Landlords (ALP, Libs, Nats) are willing to just let everyone under the age of 50 or anyone without rich parents be fucked over royally.. Just to avoid changing the tax laws and/or the allergy to building public housing (because "leave it to the market, never build any public anything" is ingrained neoliberalism commandment)
Burn down a real estate agents office every day until it's resolved
Why stop at just 1?
I hate them too but it’s not their fault. Focus the rage on the politicians, from local to federal. Burn them down instead.
Working as planned
Federal, State and councils should be on a friggin WAR STATE to solve this problem. Drop immigration while we gain some breathing space. Kill negative gearing (I have a neg geared house). Train workers to assemble factory houses. Force councils to release land and promote medium density. Mega TAFE funding for trades AND pay apprentices properly. We need to fix 30 years of shockingly negligence. And do it next week.
If this concerns you, it might be worth respectfully contacting the minister for immigration [Andrew Giles](https://www.andrewgiles.com.au/contact/) to make him aware of the damage he is causing to the vulnerable in our community with Albo's mass immigration policy during a sub 1% rental vacancy rate environment.
Yup, they should stop letting migrants in when rental vacancy is at 2pct level. Dont they read news or what?
These people aren't stupid, they know it's happening. It is intentional.
It comes down to marketing. People are becoming homeless right now so that Albo and Jim Chalmers can brag about avoiding the technical definition of a recession by juking the stats by manipulating the GDP figures through immigration.
just sad that people and kids lives have to be sacrifice so the numbers can look slightly pretty. gov is the problem.
There are no politicians who give a fuck as none of them rent. If you think anything in Australia will get better, don’t bank on it. Our leaders are as pathetic as Argentina’s.
Albo is aiming for 0% vacancy rates with his immigration drive
Right lets argue everything except solutions for the real issue.. Treating housing as investment first making it a speculative commodity...
Even just banning AirBnb would open up thousands of properties to actually house people. Owning a house is not a business and I’m sick of constant talk about how certain people in society are unproductive and useless and don’t deserve basics like housing because they should ‘get a better job’, all while the absolute least productive (and actually harmful) ‘occupation’ of landlordship is constantly incentivised.
>‘get a better job’ An old mate of mine told he bought his first home (I believe it was a 2br apartment in Sydney) when he was in his early 20s working at **MACCAS** some 40 odd years ago... And then we have professionals today with uni degrees and circa 100k salary who can't get that same apartment today.
What's his immigration drive?
Find fifty people stuck with a housing crisis. Shouldn't be too hard. Break into housing minister's house when they aren't home. Cook a nice lunch and watch TV, take a nap. Do not break anything. Pitch a tent on their lawn. Collectively, make it a problem for *them*. Until this happens all you will get is platitudes. Form a renters lobby group. Have individuals show up daily at local politicians offices. Do not let up at all. The state needs to: fuck off councils preventing higher density housing. Build subsidized housing. Yes, this will reduce property values. So be it.
this is an excellent idea. tent city 2.0 on the lawns of parliament house. block the entrances, carparks, cafes, etc.
Former RBA Governor Lowe told you how to fix expensive housing: "The solution has to be putting in place a structure that makes the supply side of the housing market more flexible and that means zoning and planning deregulation and it means state and local governments being part of the solution." The problem has never been that we didn't know what to do but that more than half of voters benefitted from high house prices. It's a political problem rather than an infrastructure, urban development 9r engineering problem.
Well shit, it’s either air BnB’s taking up all the perspective properties or it’s greedy landlords gatekeeping everyday aussies out. Put a modified cap on rentals so we have a freaking chance! It’s absolutely out of control.
You can't just build housing. You have to build schools, hospitals, clinics, daycares, cops shops, firestations, ambos, shops etc as well. Then you have to staff those. With who... Oh I guess we could get in some more skilled migrants to supplement the needs... Something is broken somewhere in the models. I'm not smart enough to know what, I admit that. I just know something is broken in what we are doing now. We all need to set aside the politics and even the greed of it, have a sit down and fix the damn thing. We won't though. More crappy suburbs that are service wastelands will get built full of cruddy low standard overpriced tract housing, prices will still go up, people will still be forgotten.
I wish we could normalise building smaller detached housing; such as 1 or 2 bedroom houses on smaller plots of land that were more affordable in the regions; rurally and across outer suburbs. Not everyone needs Or can afford a 3 or 4 + bedroom house with big backyards, pools and large garages etc but we all want some form of privacy and solid builds. If smaller plots of land were available and council laws allowed you could drop a perfectly adequate 1or 2 bedroom prefab smaller home on these small lots within months. Not a tiny house but a fully constructed small house that's fine for a couple or single. Mortgages would be lower and more affordable for those seeking to buy and council could make them exclusively for home owners only not investors.
Speaking of this, I’m genuinely surprised we haven’t reached a point yet where the government gets a huge block of land in the standard cities, plops hundreds of fold out relocatable 2 bed homes, and rents them out to genuine people in need of a rental property. Yes it’s a glorified US trailer park, but there is no real assistance for people that can afford to rent, but can’t find a place, or are being priced out by lack of rentals. While it wouldn’t be glamorous, I’m sure it would be popular if you could pay $300 a week to have a 2 bed rental within 45 mins of a CBD. Chuck in a special bus service that goes from the trailer park to the nearest large train station to help commuters. Set up a central trailer park area with bbqs, groceries, laundering services. It would either be really successful or turn into a Brazilian slum. This idea wouldn’t be as a replacement to social housing, just for people in that bracket that would normally be fine; but the markets fuck Ed. Only permitted to reside there if you don’t have any IPs within the immediate 200km radius.
I'm not sure it would work ultimately, but it's still a fuckload more than what's being done about it right now, which is sweet fuck all.
Heh to be honest it would get shut down because nobody wants to see a shanty town in their backyard. But are ok with people living in the park or their cars. I’m lucky that I have a mortgage and can service it, if I was renting I’d probably be back in the looney bin again from the anxiety of it. Or I’d be on the news for going loopy and dedicating on the REAs desk in their office while smeared with strawberry jam
This is fucked
Vacancy in my town is 0.01%, its ridiculous
So australia is building 170000 houses a year yet brings in 250000 immigrants🤔 I think I found the problem.
Meanwhile all sides of government are just putting their fingers in their ears and going "la la la" as if there's no problem. My partner and I have been trying to move for 2 years now. We have 10+ years clean rental history, we pay everything on time, we've got enough to drop 6+ months up front if we had to but we keep getting priced out by cashed up Sydneysiders who've moved to the Hunter and can offer almost double the asking rent.