Mystified - Housing Shortage vs. More Immigration

roland · 9 February 2010

Just saw Wayne Swan on TV saying we have a national housing shortage of around 110,000 dwellings which is expected to swell to 400,000 before it gets better.

Our Government is hell bent on bringing more people here through skilled immigration and humanitarian acceptances.

We are running out of water, our farmers are struggling etc, etc .....

I've played SIM City, not enough dwellings, poor infrastructure or over crowding leads to an unhealthy environment.

Can someone, much brighter than me, explain why our Government seems to be contradicting itself...

disarray · 10 February 2010

because our growth economics model requires an inexhaustible amount of cheap labour and rapacious consumers to keep ticking over, and the government doesn't want to release more land for fear of making landowners (ie. people with money) very unhappy.

once thing that does piss me off is foreign ownership of land in australia. in much of the world if you aren't a citizen you can't own land, yet we allow hedge funds, sovereign funds, wealth funds from all over the place buy land here so australian nationals have to compete with foreign capital to buy land here.

i heard a story about a chinese businessman with $150 million cruising the eastern suburbs of sydney buying premium properties for his fund. why does mr. & mrs. average australian have to compete with foreign funds to buy property here in australia?

p.s. civilisation > sim city

It's Snake Pliskin · 10 February 2010

Tim Harford's book the Undercover Economist might help give some perspective on the issue from an economists point of view. Marginality etc...

naughtynickers · 10 February 2010

It was printed in a Daily Reckoning email recently that the so called figure of housing short fall was mainly based on homeless people and 12 people leaving in one house so to speak.
Thus the majority of these people do not want to or cannot afford their own dwelling, yet they are still counted as statistics.

Come out to South West Sydney there is thousands of empty blocks in new estates for sale.
I think the biggest problem with this so called housing shortage is that people don't want to buy in areas far out from the city where land is avaible due to the outrageous price of land. Nothing else. Also the fact that there is little jobs available in the further out areas.

Anyway to answer the Q, govt will bring in any immigration that can add to it's tax dollars, all very short term thinking. I don't think we have a PM yet who really has had the vision required.

Mr J · 10 February 2010

disarray said:
why does mr. & mrs. average australian have to compete with foreign funds to buy property here in australia?

People are going to complain either way.

Tysonboss1 · 11 February 2010

disarray said:
.

once thing that does piss me off is foreign ownership of land in australia. in much of the world if you aren't a citizen you can't own land, yet we allow hedge funds, sovereign funds, wealth funds from all over the place buy land here so australian nationals have to compete with foreign capital to buy land here.

It works both ways, Heaps of Aussie individuals, funds and companies own property over seas, how could we possibly block others from investing here.

look at companies like westfield, the macquarie funds, and just about every other listed property company all own properties over seas,

GumbyLearner · 11 February 2010

Tysonboss1 said:
It works both ways, Heaps of Aussie individuals, funds and companies own property over seas, how could we possibly block others from investing here.

look at companies like westfield, the macquarie funds, and just about every other listed property company all own properties over seas,

Tb1 has a point there disarray. The poms must be mighty pissed at the lack of work on the Westfield (or should I say Wastefield) project in Bradford, UK.

Tysonboss1 · 12 February 2010

GumbyLearner said:
Tb1 has a point there disarray. The poms must be mighty pissed at the lack of work on the Westfield (or should I say Wastefield) project in Bradford, UK.

:topic Sorry,

Whats going on at the bradford development, are westfields dragging their feet.

drsmith · 12 February 2010

Tysonboss1 said:
It works both ways, Heaps of Aussie individuals, funds and companies own property over seas, how could we possibly block others from investing here.

look at companies like westfield, the macquarie funds, and just about every other listed property company all own properties over seas,

With commercial property isn't a greater proportion of the value tied up in the infrastructure on it than with residential property ?

Tysonboss1 · 12 February 2010

drsmith said:
With commercial property isn't a greater proportion of the value tied up in the infrastructure on it than with residential property ?

Yes you could argue that point, but what does that matter.

Australian companies investing over seas have certainly not limited them selves to commercial property, there are heaps of aussie individuals buying up apartments and houses in the states and NZ, Heaps of investment funds and companies buying whole apartment buildings and retirement villas over seas.

There is plenty of cheap land in australia, you just have to get out of the capital cities,

It's a global economy, if we want to own a piece of the rest of the world, then the rest of the world has to own a piece of australia.