Build, baby, build. Supply is the only game in town. Photo: Region.
Apparently, Australia, including the ACT, is experiencing a housing crisis.
You know, with exploding rents and house prices so out of reach that many young and not-so-young people are just giving up thinking about ever buying their own home.
It’s turning families out on the street and lengthening waiting lists for already stretched public housing.
There are warnings of the economic, social and health impacts of an embittered generation disengaged from the rest of society. Of a return to Dickensian times of landlords and tenants. The best of times and the worst of times.
How did we get here, many are asking. It’s complicated.
But how do we fix it? That’s easy. Just build more houses.
Don’t overthink it. It’s just a matter of supply and demand.
Don’t be distracted by lefty economists’ talk about capital gains and negative gearing being a tax scam that distorts the market and keeps prices on the up and up.
Where will we get all those rental properties if we stop supporting our mum and dad investors? You know, the ones who can borrow to the hilt and outbid anyone at auction to accumulate portfolios with dozens of properties?
If anything, we need to provide more support to the property industry, not less.
And the last thing we want is for government to get back into the housing game, building their affordable homes with cheap rents (read ghettos), lowering property values and allowing anyone to move into the neighbourhood.
It’s their fault anyway for holding up land release to inflate prices, strangling enterprise with red tape, and imposing their wretched energy efficiency requirements on perfectly reasonable homes. If you can’t afford the bill, just put on a jumper or lie on the bathroom tiles.
Government can’t be the solution. Leave it to the private sector. Build 1.2 million homes? Easy, just get out of the way.
But who’s going to build them? What about the skills shortage?
That’s what immigration’s for.
Yeah, but where are they going to live?
They’ll find a way. They always do.
So, when we have all these houses, townhouses, apartments, studios, tiny houses, and dog boxes, that’ll bring prices down, right? Supply and demand?
Hang on there! It’s not a charity, and you don’t expect the great Australian homeowner to take a bath, do you?
Anyway, I think you’ll find enough cash and bonafide buyers in the system to keep prices tickety-boo. It may be a Ponzi scheme, but there are enough in it to keep it going for a while yet.
And there is always the bank of mum and dad.
Remember, in every crisis, there are opportunities.
There’ll be plenty of places to rent. Just get another job or two.
Fortunately, ever since honest Bill tried it on in 2019 and came up short, everybody is now on the same page.
Yes, it’s absolutely a crisis and aren’t the statistics alarming but you have to look at the big picture.
You can’t solve anything from opposition and you fiddle with the tax system at your peril.
No, supply is the only game in town. Aspirational, of course.
What a great word that is. Thanks, John. Thanks, Peter.
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