29 May 2009

More FOI mayhem, this time on land rent

| johnboy
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We still await the identity of Mr. Stanhope’s secret lender for his land rent scheme.

In the meantime the Liberals have handed over a wedge of hilarious correspondence, by what feels like everyone involved in the scheme, expressing their doubts about it.

Someone (presumably in Liberal HQ) has handily highlighted the good bits but I will briefly paraphrase the revealed concerns:

    1.) Banks don’t want to lend just for construction without the value of the land guaranteeing the loan.
    2.) Cost of construction can often be higher than the value of the completed dwelling, creating negative equity from the get go.
    3.) The lack of security would force banks to charge higher rates of interest, notso hotso in a scheme intended to make things easier for the less affluent.
    4.) The less affluent trying to use the scheme will end up owning depreciating asset while the ACT Government retains ownership of the ever more valuable land.

Our brave leader however is never graceful in defeat and still reckons he can make this turkey fly.

The question is why he thinks it will be a good thing even if he does get it in the air?

UPDATED: According to Zed Seselja the Chiefly one has had a bit of a tanty about this. Zed is apologising on our behalf:

    “On behalf of the Legislative Assembly I would like to apologise to the Management and staff of Genworth who, in good faith made every attempt to engage with the ACT and its housing affordability options. That Genworth chose not to touch the Stanhope Land Rent Scheme should not mean they are subjected to baseless and outrageous allegations by the office of the Chief Minister.

    “Firstly I am calling on the Chief Minister to apologise for the outrageous allegations made by his office that cast aspersions over the management and staff of Genworth,” Zed said “Secondly, the Chief Minister should answer publicly why the Opposition were not given a copy of the damning letter that appeared in the media this morning.

Anyone know what that was about?

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VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy1:22 pm 29 May 09

Land rent is a bad, bad idea. It doesn’t work financially for anyone except the government.

in the discussion this morning between zed and mark parton – who mentioned the riot act as the informative canberra news site, on 2CC! The mystery lender is what the opposition wants to know about – is it a small or a large institution, and will the global economic crisis have any bearing on it?

YapYapYap said :

A dozen pages on this issue is clearly not everything the Libs accessed under FOI. I’d prefer to see all the documents released – extracts like this won’t tell the whole story, whatever it is, but of course that’s the point isn’t it. Trust a Lib – never.

Too narrow: should be ‘Trust a party in government – never’. Don’t get fooled by your own party-political alleigance when it comes to cover-ups and FOI.

I’ve seen enough FOI releases to know that you can wade through hundreds if not thousands of pages of nothing to get one or two pages of something useful. Maybe this is the page they accidentally let slip through.

If all those other pages from the request supported Stanhope’s version of events, you can be sure he would have produced them, and the CT would have reported his side of the story too.

The question is why he thinks it will be a good thing even if he does get it in the air?

More money for the government.

People rent the land for some time, and the land goes up in value, and then later someone buys the land at the higher market value.. (so 1000’s in rent + higher value later)

They call it an ‘affordable option’, when in reality it’s designed to squeeze ever more money out of a single block of land.

The worst part, I think eventually this will enable the price of land to continue rising beyond more people’s means (eg YOU), and take a step closer to the ultimate dream – nobody owning land and everyone renting it. Total BS

FAIL!

The problem is in this vast country of our ours, our govts have for some reason orchestrated an absurd land shortage so we partook in one of the worlds greatest real estate bubbles which will be looked back on in the years to come as we do with the whitlam years and the coming tragedy of the Rudd years.

A dozen pages on this issue is clearly not everything the Libs accessed under FOI. I’d prefer to see all the documents released – extracts like this won’t tell the whole story, whatever it is, but of course that’s the point isn’t it. Trust a Lib – never.

in sert “used”

stupid laptop backspace key

Stanhope wont listen any criticsm: His butt cheeks are being as ear muffs.

The secret identity on this shot is definitely not a bank – s41 only applies to personal privacy of natural person.

I so want me a copy of some of those Treasury documents.
But that risk manager sounds like the only sane person they come in contact with.
Pity she’s an outside consultant…

and who is this scheme primarily aimed at? low income earners who want to own a house of their very own? I think most will stay with their cheap rent courtesy of act housing.

Please excuse my posting, if it has nothing to do with topic. I may have misunderstood the contect of article!

Don’t know if the Banks have changed their lending rules much from 4 years ago, but the only way we could get into the own home market without a deposit, was by purchasing the land 1st. Only Macquarie Bank would lend us money for a non deposit loan. Also we went through a finance broker, so don’t know if that made it easier dealing with Macquarie Bank. We then used the equity of the land and the 1st home owners grant ($5000 back then I think) to apply for the building loan.

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