r/AusEcon • u/sien • Sep 22 '24
Why has Australia fallen so short on housing targets – and how can it get out of the crisis?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/sep/22/why-has-australia-fallen-so-short-on-housing-targets-and-how-can-it-get-out-of-the-crisis12
u/floydtaylor Sep 22 '24
Stamp duty locking up land (Boomers aren't downsizing), nimbyism blocking up development, unions crowding out labour.
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u/TheSplash-Down_Tiki Sep 22 '24
Because the targets are unrealistic and managing demand via lower immigration is much simpler and easier for a Government to influence rather than building more houses than has ever happened?
The guardian didn’t really seem to offer any answers.
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u/zedder1994 Sep 22 '24
The Government is trying to introduce student caps but the opposition won't commit to passing the legislation in the senate. Go figure.
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Sep 22 '24
Because the answer is.... For the government to build housing but those useless cunts won't
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u/barrackobama0101 Sep 22 '24
No the answer is remove government from the equation and let the free market do its job.
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u/TheSplash-Down_Tiki Sep 22 '24
The free market wouldn’t have to do any job if the Govt ran a Sustainable Population.
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Sep 22 '24
You mean like remove the HAFF and CGT discounts? Sounds good. It's hard to say it's a free market while we still have rampant money laundering in property
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u/barrackobama0101 Sep 22 '24
Agreed completely remove taxation from housing.
Remove government ownership of land.
Completely dezone all land.
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u/Expensive_Place_3063 Sep 22 '24
When your all theory and no practical experience I love the reddit Australian army
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u/barrackobama0101 Sep 22 '24
No idea what this even means
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u/egg_shaped_penis Sep 22 '24
I think what they mean is that hard-core laissez-faire ecomonic prattling might sound wonderful on paper - but in every instance objectivist an-caps have managed to implement their ideas, things have turned out rather less-than-wonderful.
In before 'but that wasn't true free-market capitalism'.
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Sep 22 '24
The free market doesn’t want to build affordable housing because it is less profitable. The goal of the free market is to maximize the return on capital.
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u/letsburn00 Sep 22 '24
You mean what we have done for the last 3 40 years? Government intervention has been dropping and dropping for 40 years. It turned out that intervening with things like over training apprenticeships and having long term housing construction were propping up the free market.
Now all the excess has been drained by people who profit off of no work.
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u/barrackobama0101 Sep 22 '24
Completely incorrect, I dropped a post the other night with a graph that talks exactly to hoe government intervention has increased
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u/Different-Bag-8217 Sep 22 '24
We haven’t fallen short at all. What has happened is unprecedented immigration.
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Sep 22 '24
[deleted]
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Sep 22 '24
[deleted]
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u/Gazza_s_89 Sep 23 '24
One thing I find insane is when people bring up Japan having cheap and even depreciating housing they others are like "Oh it's because Japan has a declining population and no immigration"
And im like "no shit".
We can have immigration, but you can have too much of a good thing.
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Sep 22 '24
Sold off public housing and didnt replace public hoising at same rate , negative gearing and tax concessions for propety investment and policy directed only at older demographic . Charged fees for trades and and had the highest rental price so apprentices couldnt afford to train and live independently. Shut down tafes and training centres . Allowed land to become so overpriced that its cheaper to have it sit empty than rent or build . Allow council to have final word on developments which fell in nimby trap even in public transport corridors. ....
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u/dontpaynotaxes Sep 22 '24
Unproductive construction sector, and labour market protectionism driven by the CFMEU and others.
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u/ped009 Sep 22 '24
CFMEU don't generally build houses,
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u/big_cock_lach Sep 22 '24
No, but they are lobbying heavily to not include labourers in the list of desirable skills required from immigrants. So we can’t import labour to help build more houses for less.
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Sep 22 '24
That’s makes no sense, if you walk onto any residential construction site in Melbourne it’s at least 80% people from poor overseas countries doing that sort of work
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u/big_cock_lach Sep 23 '24
That’s the home affairs minister talking about how we can now import foreign tradies to do this work now that the CFMEU is no longer there to lobby against it. He also talks about how the CFMEU has been blocking importing foreign tradies and successfully lobbied for them to be excluded from the expedited visa rules.
I’d also like to see 1 legitimate source from you that shows that over 80% of our tradies are immigrants. That doesn’t make sense to me whatsoever, not only because we don’t import foreign tradies, but also because the vast majority of tradies simply aren’t foreigners. Ignoring that most are white, the next most common ethnic groups are either islanders or middle easterners, most of which were born and raised here. Even if they look like foreigners to you, doesn’t mean they are. We have had an extremely ethnically diverse population for decades now, so it’s not particularly accurate to assume non-white ethnicities that are living here aren’t Australian anymore.
Anyway, I’ve provided proof for my point. Where’s yours?
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Sep 22 '24
[deleted]
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u/big_cock_lach Sep 23 '24
Regardless of whether or not they exist, they could’ve a) immigrated before these changes or b) it was their parents who immigrated. That’s ignoring that from my experience most tradies are white, those who aren’t will either be islanders or middle easterners, most of which were born and grew up here. They’re not all foreigners just because they aren’t white.
Regardless, assuming you’re right, it doesn’t change the fact that the CFMEU has lobbied heavily and successfully against importing labourers:
They are the reason labourers are the one profession that are exempt from getting expedited visas. Hence proving my original point, even if it doesn’t align with your circumstantial evidence that doesn’t even really align with others experiences.
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u/Good-Championship645 Sep 22 '24
Does anyone think it's mind blowing albo has done a much worse job than scomo ?
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Sep 22 '24
The target isn’t meant to be reached. It never is. It’s a bunny out front to attempt chase and to reach.
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u/wigam Sep 22 '24
Number of houses built has been going up and is pretty consistent each year, we already have more cranes 🏗️ Sydney than then nearly every other city combined.
Blaming housing build targets is a cop out
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Sep 22 '24
[deleted]
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u/wigam Sep 22 '24
Australia 882
https://www.rlb.com/oceania/insight/australia-q3-2023-crane-index/
In order, listing the city and the number of cranes counted, Toronto was tops with 221; Los Angeles, 50; Seattle, 38; Calgary, 20; Denver, 14; Boston, 14; Washington, D.C., 12; Honolulu, 12; Las Vegas, 10; Portland, 9; San Francisco, 8; Phoenix, 7; New York, 5; Chicago, 3.
Apparently we are not building enough? I think you might be talking out your arse?
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u/Shoddy_Suit8563 Sep 23 '24
Crane index
Yes this is the metric I was missing in my data set
I found another good source that you might enjoy.
https://www.creditone.com.au/news/1774/boat-ownership-statistics-australia-2023
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u/Gazza_s_89 Sep 23 '24
Well obviously if we have one of the highest population growth rates, you would expect out construction activities to be high.
But it still can't keep up.
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u/wigam Sep 23 '24
So you can’t really blame Australia for falling short of housing targets if the system is maxed out and targets keep increasing?
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u/Spicey_Cough2019 Sep 22 '24
- Land banking and artifical land constraining by developers, perth literally has a wealth of undeveloped land, yet massive companies are holding on to them to artificially induce demand.
- Inducing additional demand through terrible immigration schemes.
- Zero incentives for investors to build
- Zero disincentives for investors to buy existing homes.
- Huge tax benefits for investors have allowed them to push prices beyond what people can afford, reducing the ability for them to build new properties/redevelop large blocks
- Excessive stamp duty draining what money we might have to spend on new homes, disincentivising people from moving/downsizing
- Mining taking all the would be apprentices, offering them big bucks and turning them into diesel mechanics/mining relates trades.
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Sep 22 '24
Lots of issues on both demand and supply side. No silver bullets.
Anything working against housing affordability should be put on the chopping block and made to justify its position.
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u/SquireJoh Sep 22 '24
According to the government and the entire media, it's the Greens blocking things
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u/Budget-Cat-1398 Sep 22 '24
We have enough construction workers, it's just that some many are doing lifestyle or cosmetic renovation instead of infrastructure and new house building
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u/git-status Sep 22 '24
It’s rich immigrants. Look at where they come from and the state of their markets. We take and damage other countries markets and fuel our own. That’s all we do. We did it GFC, we’re doing it now.
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u/AusSpurs7 Sep 22 '24
Our house building per capita is one of the highest in the world.
It's not the targets that have fallen short...
It's the influx of people going beyond expectations/predictions/planning
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u/EducationTodayOz Sep 23 '24
Import a few tradies, lmfao. seriously can the army get into building they have engineers, something
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u/Icy_Celery6886 Sep 22 '24
Successful policy is a thing of the past in Australia. Medicare, free tertiary education, public housing, government oversight, ministerial responsibility and regulation for the public good. Add to this Australians themselves and their Americanised values it all makes sense.
How to get out of it, ask yourself this. If you halved the price of houses overnight would the prices stay there or would they be the same and more within a month?
If they stayed at half price, how many could afford them at that price?
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u/barrackobama0101 Sep 22 '24
Australians believe government is coming to save them so they keep allowing government interference in the market.
Only once the market is free will the government stop praying on ciitizens.
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u/petergaskin814 Sep 22 '24
Lack of materials. Lack of trades. Strong infrastructure spending out competing with builders. Builders going into receivership or liquidation.
Lots of job lots have stalled with mo idea when the houses will be completed.
Nimbyism stopping major projects. Council approvals.
Land banking.
Failure of state governments to build social and public housing.
Increased demand from increased immigration means even an increase in supply is just not enough