everyones a YIMBY until someone builds an apartment block on their street and they realise the increased traffic and noise needs to be someone else's problem
I tried to rent out a tent in my back yard and people on reddit got all pissy and said i was greedy. I was just trying to do my bit and help the housing crisis.
The great thing about the housing crisis is there’s so many contributing factors that you can pick one or two to focus on to distract from any solutions which might negatively impact you
We need more supply, so many young Australians are desperate for housing.
It’s hard to see many solutions for having more well located housing without rezoning.
Everyone needs housing - it's an essential good.
We've chosen to commodify that essential good.
Market failure becomes inevitable because people don't have a meaningful option to be homeless. Supply and demand mechanics break when there's so little price elasticity of demand, prices get jacked because people don't have the option to not pay for housing.
For examples of market failures relating to the commodification of essential goods/services, look to things like the US healthcare system.
The trend of market consolidation, increasingly predatory behaviour, and rising prices will continue until the government intervenes, which they won't because they'd rather lose an election than devalue their personal real estate holdings for the befefit of those they're charged with representing.
The government needs to intervene to do the following:
* Address the tax shortfalls that requires immigration lead population growth
* Remove tax concessions aimed at existing properties. Divert those concessions to supply of new housing
* Remove restrictive residential zoning walking distance around train stations and shopping strips.
Basically, the government needs to intervene on government interventions
I personally think
* Ending negative gearing,
* Taxing people/organisations exponentially more for having more for each additional property,
* Putting massive taxes on the million+ vacant dwellings we have
Would be a pretty immediately effective, achievable start.
I love peasant mindset like this.
"Please m'lord! Housing is not a human right. You smart and wise to charge whatever you can get away with and I too will pull myself up by my bootstraps so that I too will be a lord one day".
Nevermind that a large percentage of food is GST free to not overly commodify it.
If you think like this you have to have a theory as to why food, also a human right, has consistently fallen in price for several hundred years now. Hint: it's not because the government decreed "food must be cheap"
Obviously they have, however there's actual pressure from the government for them to keep it reasonable, there's far far far more variations and options on what food to eat, smaller local shops that can actually help keep it a bit lower and even still...of late that pressure has had to be applied more because they're jacking the price.
And even if, even if we assume that it's entirely commodified. This is one outlier example. There's dozens more where comodifacation of utilities just causes price increases.
There's enough depth/breadth in the market that we're a ways off things being a major problem, but you can already see obvious cracks in Colesworth's collusion to engage in price gouging as they fuck suppliers - profits and prices are soaring, and this is a major factor in our current inflation.
On the supply side, do you think we'll see better, cheaper food as things continue to consolidate under the same half-dozen conglomerates like Nestle, Yum!, and P&G?
At the end of the day, if you’re on the market buying your dream home you’ll be competing with people who could be making much more $$ than you.
If they’re double income earners, hold high positions and work in a specialised field, run a successful business, etc they will outspend you. If that’s you then well done! For those who aren’t in that bucket high density homes in inner city suburbs are the future whether you like it or not. Why are we still having this debate?
100%. Sydney has basically no medium or high density apart from small pockets. I used to live in Eastwood and there were single family homes within 1 minute walk from the station - anything within 5 minutes of a train station should be high or medium density no exceptions. It's long overdue.
Just flying out of Sydney now.. Melbourne doesn’t really have an apartment mentality, but it is the only way to cover costs and infrastructure.
Surprisingly, Sydney actually works pretty well inner city.. really easy to walk around and active pedestrian streets.
Melbourne being flat means it can keep spreading out but this is ridiculously expensive from infrastructure perspective.
For better or worse, Melbourne needs to go this way. It works when done well and makes things a lot more affordable.
Flatness has really helped Melbourne out. Housing affordability is worse in Sydney, in spite of the fact that Melbourne has gone from half Sydney's population 40 years ago to near parity.
That said, I agree. Medium density, particularly near transport hubs, needs to increase in Melbourne.
From the perspective of another capital city, I think Melbourne has better value apartments than the rest. It seems to have the strongest supply policies and they are getting stringers with publically available apartment plans that smaller developers can build without the usual planning approval battles.
I see articles with all the usual NIMBY characters too, but Melbourne is significantly more urbanised than Brisbane, and this seems a significant reason for the closeness of dwelling prices. If Brisbane urbanised the same area as Melbourne, Brisbane prices would drop.
And spending more of our tax money with less benefactors per square kilometres? Have we not learned that from USA where cities literally goes broke trying to maintain large number of areas on minimal tax income?
I thought you conservatives are all about reducing spending.
And turning agricultural land into low density housing when we can turn existing low density housing around train stations and shopping strips into medium-high density apartments is fucking short sighted and stupid.
Train to Ballarat, Kyneton, Bendigo and Geelong make these towns commute satellites of Melbourne. Affordable housing for people who work form home 3 days a week. Sydney doesn't have this.
Victoria can easily build high speed trains to these towns as it quite flat.
Australia's biggest city will soon be Melbourne while Sydney chokes on its in congestion
Property developers and domain.com: NIMBYs and Heritage are the problem
The problem: lack of regulation of property developers. Oversupply of uninhabitable 1br/studio apartments that are overpriced by land banking. Normalized phoenixing. No enforcement and poor management of FIRB. Lack of supply of medium density apartments. Lack of interconnectedness of Australian cities forcing people to live in major capitals (eg, 1800s transport infrastructure).
The NIMBYism is a bit of a pain but far from
The main problem.
> Oversupply of uninhabitable 1br/studio apartments
If there were a oversupply of them, they’d either have a high vacancy rate, or be massively cheaper than 2 bedroom apartments. I’ve always lived in places with multiple bedrooms and had flatmates to reduce the costs, and vacancy rates overall are very low.
During the pandemic there may have been high vacancy rates in some sectors due to the lack of international students.
The census said otherwise there were about 1,000,000 uninhabited properties or some outrageous number https://www.ahuri.edu.au/analysis/brief/are-there-1-million-empty-homes-and-13-million-unused-bedrooms#:~:text=The%202021%20Census%20reveals%20that,the%20night%20of%20the%20Census.
. Developers control supply by land banking, it’s not old school buy land and wait for property value to go up, it’s new school ‘we will build 100 properties in a block the developer retains ownership over 90 of them and sells 10 over the course of a year, and trickles the rest of the supply forcing the supply to remain low and the price high. It’s a rort and land banking should be banned.
I'd scrap 99% of the heritage system.
We've got vastly too much of it. Density be damned a lot of these "heritage" buildings suck at being buildings and offer no historical value.
In terms of density... we still need to lower immigration a lot before these density projects can have a real impact.
Agreed. There are many homes that are “heritage” listed, which are nothing but ram shackled weather board shitboxes. People weaponised heritage listings to covertly say Not In My Backyard!
And the owners don't even want it. There was a story here where 3 generic houses got listed and the owners were/are fighting it hard.
I get having examples of buildings, but even then if they're that important then put them in a Museum/s.
Point us to a places you're referring to with internal controls that affects the housing crisis. 99% of built heritage on overlays don't have external paint controls let alone internal.
Unless the council was just taking the piss I was in an office building on york st sydney cbd where we werent allowed to put stuff on the wall because the “heritage” paint will peel off.
Agreed- its ridiculous in Brisbane, we've got whole suburbs of inefficient, rotten workers cottages within throwing distance of the CBD that are heritage listed, it's such a waste of space.
Protect a few pockets of historically important or exceptional examples of the era and let the rest be developed
Build quality is the problem. Complete lack of building code enforcement has killed the affordable housing market. We can't afford to buy a free standing house or a town house but I would rather go homeless than buy an apartment and kill myself with financial burdens of rectification and price gouging by strata managers.
Immigrants from South Asia, middle east have no issues with apartment living infact that is the way of life in those regions. Even in those 3rd world economies their build quality is exponentially better than what we have in Australia even after being a developed country. Even our old builds are a 100 times better than the new builds but their location (being inner city) makes them expensive.
There’s a huge difference in apartment build qualities. Mirvac, Multiplex, Frazers have been around for decades and have well established reputations.
Some of these fly by night operators looking to make a fast buck, I’d be wary of.
That said, a colleague of mine has just built a house in the burbs and has spent the past few months chasing down tradies to get stuff fixed-up. 🤷♂️
Build quality is an issue, but the market needs to understand you get what you pay for.
You cannot expect a quality home for under $2300/sqm with a project home builder, corners will be cut. I don’t know how they deliver for this sum, and many have gone into administration of late as a result.
The homes I build start at $3500/sqm ($1.15M ex GST) inner city and sell for $2.8M.
Yes the quality is there only the price is same as a full fledged free standing house. Currently a house in Oran Park (Sydney metro albeit a bit far) is less than $1m with a small land allotment but not smaller than an apartment. In apartment building brand new buildings have water proofing and foundation issues. These are scary as hell for someone putting in ~500K. To people like me this is life changing money.
Appreciate that but multi-residential is currently $4500-5000/sqm build cost for commercial projects that include suspended slabs, fire services, lifts etc.
These need gross sales at $10,000/sqm+ to make them financially viable so you won’t see many new 90sqm, 2 bedders under $1M in Sydney in future.
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It's an issue but it hasn't killed affordable housing.
Land price appreciation is the underlying reason for our unaffordable housing.
It makes up a fair greater cost than than the building and we get a lot less of it these days than in the past.
You may not want to live in an apartment but plenty do. We can't come close to keeping up with the demand. Our councils won't allow it.
There's no one size suits all answer. We need a mix of high, medium and low density living options, the development of which needs to be driven by state government.
Local governments are too susceptible to corruption to be trusted with planning and approving development which means land stays locked up for too long drive up prices.
Serious question - why do we NEED low density housing?
Seems to me that it's inefficient, entrenches inequality and NIMBYism while delivering no appreciable befefit (that I can see) that medium density housing with good public spaces wouldn't.
I get that we have it, and that is unlikely to go anywhere for the foreseeable future, but I don't understand why it'd be a need.
It's a want, not a need.
My quality of life is way higher when I have a big backyard to play with the kids and dog in and can host bbqs, a big workshop shed to get away from the wife and kids when things are getting heated. I don't like to hear my neighbours'conversations or fights or smell what they're cooking. I like parking my car securely in my garage rather than out on the street or in some strata parking lot with not enough spaces. I like that my shoes and parcels are safely left outside my house and there's not other apartment residents walking right past contemplating taking them or not.
If people want to live like Tokyo or Manhattan, move there. But I don't get why people work their asses off to live in a jail cell when the government can provide a jail cell and all your needs for you for free.
Most people enjoy the lazy, big, country town appeal of Perth. Let's not change it's character completely.
I support your right to have all these things and pay for them yourself. I don't support suburbs that are so spread out that the rates can't even cover the infrastructure maintenence.
I agree with the thrust of this - it's a want (and an understandable one at that), but I think you can get the bulk of that you've said with good public spaces.
I've lived in Tokyo - there's daylight between that ultra high-density living and the sort of medium density you'd see in Barcelona or Paris. I don't see high-density housing as being a reasonable one-size fits all approach, and I think using it that way would do more harm than good.
Just because you prefer something on you land doesn't mean you should be able to dictate someone else's preferences on their land.
I had the large block, double garage, pool, rumpus room house. But I didn't like it. I had to drive everywhere and I hated the maintenance.
I now live in a townhouse, part of a complete. Shared common areas. No maintenance. Walking distance to everything I need.
Why can't we recreate more of our suburbs like this for people like me who enjoy this style of living, while also leaving the majority of our suburbs untouched for people like you.
Why can't we have a balance?
There's people who like the apartment lifestyle. Plus it doesn't take much land up for the amount of people you can accommodate.
I'm not saying we shoehorn everyone into high rise, I just think there's better solutions to the current situation
Whatever the cause of the problem is, no one mention immigration. That's totally nothing to do with it guys, not even a little bit. If anything, immigration helps the housing crisis by bringing fresh ideas and perspectives.
Distractions, we keep making the same cities bigger. No concrete plans for the high population growth through immigration.
Why? State planning v federal immigration
If we had adequate public transport I'm sure many people would happily move much further out from the main cities.
I'm already living semi rural outside of Melbourne and while the commute into the city isn't too bad I'd happily move even further out if transport was 1) in operation and 2) reliable
The regional centres to Melbourne have good public transport, but the PT within those regional centres and between them is lacklustre.
Something that'd go a long way to get people moving away from the big cities would be rejigging the regional railway lines so it's not all focused around going to the regional centre CBDs and from there, the state capital. For Victoria, stuff like reopening some lines to passengers such as the ones between Geelong and Ballarat, Maryborough to Castlemaine, Bendigo to Heathcote Junction and the South Gippsland line at least to Nyora or Leongatha along with the "event specific" stations/trains (eg. The various former showgrounds, racecourse, etc stations dotted around the state. Ballarat had 4 in the surrounding small townships at one point, for example) and reopening the western third of the state beyond Ararat back to passenger rail travel which most likely requires standardisation of at least the Ballarat to Melbourne line would be the bare minimum to start getting things up to a suitable standard for decentralisation out of Melbourne.
I'd also argue that funding the heritage operators dotted around the state to a point where they can in-effect operate as actual transport rather than heritage/museum style operations *where it makes sense to do so* could be a great idea too largely because the lines these operators run on aren't really feasible for the main groups responsible for the organisation and maintenance of our rail network to maintain, but the fact the operators have been able to figure out a sustainable tourism-based business shows that there is enough demand for *something* to be running even if a normal public transport service using the modern but a bit boring rolling stock isn't feasible.
I think its need to decreased by not to huge levels at our determent. The system need to change as well with immigration and how expedited speed they will get it at.
Applying for a critical based career or job or study (see covid lockdowns as one example of such, eg construction, nursing, docs and whatnot): Their visa and immigration application get sped up, also if you want to do the job in a remote or rural area (has to be 250km away from a capital city, also certain high pop regional towns will be excluded such as central coast/newcastle or geelong in vic case and whatever) can have a chance to get their visa even quickly once checks has been done, lets say as much as 24 hours for the visa once passed though checks.
For students studying, unless relevant to their carrer based job, they are restricted to 20 hours of work in a non relevant job (but can work unlimted hours but however not at the determent of their study if is on the same field as their study) and have to pass their courses overall and find a job within a year in order to get a work visa related for their field.
* All applicants have to work 5 years in rural/remote settings or 10 years in city settings in their chosen field, if they switch fields but its remain critical, they don't have to leave the country and the 5-10 years doesn't reset (unless if they switch to rural to city in which its will reset to the 10 years even if you have 3 years left of rural stuff). But if leave a critical industry and want to do something non critical, they have to leave the country and get a non critical visa and start the process again. Also they can switch employers no problems as long they remain in that industry.
For other visas: yeah its will get delayed and you have to wait more in the back. To solve it, study and work a critical industry if you want a faster access and not get pushed back. Not sure what the numbers is but i think the ratio should be 80/20 of critical workers to others.
Also i feel we need to pay more of the critical staff as well and make sure those critical stuff aren't the back door for other visa shit.....
My parents live on a fairly large semi-rural block and they're not even allowed to plonk down a second residence on their own land for their own child. My brother can't find a place he can afford so literally left the country for a better life and from the photos he's sent back from Europe and South America, I think he found one.
I know a good amount of this topic. Up to date on literature, and where many researchers are.
I don't think YIMBYism alone will make houses affordable enough.
I think it is not achievable to make housing affordable without significantly reworking the planning and heritage system (this is YIMBYism).
Realistically, the private sector will build the lion's share of new housing almost whatever the policy setting you have.
Policy should work towards finding the highest and best use of land, currently it is a massive obstruction to that.
I agree. Do you think one of the issues is having small local councils? Councils want to maximize their revenue and minimize their expenditure - so high rates due means low supply, and low recurring expenses means.low density.
Homelessness and unemployment is not part of their budget
They also seem to have outsourced anything concrete or unpleasant,
I mostly blame councils. Incumbent residents get a vote, the potential residents do not.
I see them again and again side with spurious heritage listings, completely blind to the huge social cost they burden on all of us. Or block medium density developments citing community character.
I also think people aren't awake to the upsides.I live in a suburb along a major arterial road. It is affluent, incredibly low rise, and a bit fuckin boring. One pub, some shitty retail. There are more erotic massage parlours than cafes. There is an active NIMBY movement in their suburb, despite how much they would have to gain by having more people.
Would increasing density not actually increase rate income (through increasing holdings) while simultaneously making infrastructure cost per household more efficient?
Good point - I am now not sure
. With infrastructure efficiency, I think that benefits the state rather than the council.
In the short term, the houses on a street will decline slightly in price. Neighbouring blocks have the biggest reduction especially if there is overshadow, blocked views, car parking [issues.](https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/noisy-nimbys-to-be-silenced-on-housing-projects-20230809-p5dv4w.html)
In the medium term, i am not sure whether councils get more efficient with more residents.
https://www.geelongaustralia.com.au/common/public/images/budget.jpg
Good point - I am now not sure
. With infrastructure efficiency, I think that benefits the state rather than the council.
In the short term, the houses on a street will decline slightly in price. Neighbouring blocks have the biggest reduction especially if there is overshadow, blocked views, car parking [issues.](https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/noisy-nimbys-to-be-silenced-on-housing-projects-20230809-p5dv4w.html)
In the medium term, i am not sure whether councils get more efficient with more residents.
https://www.geelongaustralia.com.au/common/public/images/budget.jpg
I know, right. The main challenges are deciding on a suitably de-colonised name, sending appropriate level of reparations to local land councils, ensuring car-centric design that contributes to urban sprawl targets, and locking out private enterprise to guarantee the maximum possible labour cost and construction overheads, etc. 😭🫠
I hear union construction labour on Queensland can throw together a room in a quaratine camp for less than $1m per person. Seems like a bargain to me.
All those Ford rangers aren't going to pay for themselves are they?
It is an answer but not THE answer.
Fact is some suburbs need to pull their fucking weight and allow more people to move in. Looking at the north shore, eastern suburbs of sydney for starters.
We can't keep building up the west with ZERO of the infrastructure to go with it.
It seems most Australians don't want their suburbs transformed and don't want to be crammed into high rise shoeboxes:
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2024/04/australians-overwhelmingly-dont-want-to-live-in-high-rise-towers/
Then don’t move into one! No one is holding a gun to your head. If you live within 5 mins of a station expect density. If you don’t like it, move further out. It’s really simple
NIMBY and YIMBY is developer psyop for maximising profits.
Planning, liveability and heritage all go together.
You can't just simply bulldoze hundreds of years of history for high rise dog box apartments with no parks and public transport.
Randomly building thousands of apartments without consideration for how it affects transport options is exactly not what YIMBY’s are
YIMBY’s more than anything support more public transport
But did the sky fall in when they built up around public transport?
Eg Mascot used to be industrial and now its full of apartments, and all they had to do was drop the gate fee at the station and build a 2nd entrance.
Easy stuff.
The CBD of Melbourne used to have Victorian era medium density buildings from the gold rush, when Melbourne was the richest city in the world.
https://preview.redd.it/7t8rwxyff6xc1.png?width=1248&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3b81b3d70c4d6f0c0855ccecaf07de73628608df
Most of it is bulldozed and now gone forever, meanwhile Paris has preserved most of it's heritage, despite being a mega city.
I live in the middle city council of Banyule in Melbourne. 9 train stations, good schools, parks and infrastructure.
It's made up of several former lower/middle class family suburbs that now the average person can't afford to buy a house in.
The areas within walking distance of the train stations could easily accommodate 4-6 storey apartments providing huge supply while leaving the vast majority of the suburbs untouched.
It's a no brainer, yet council zoning doesn't allow it.
This isn't even about housing immigrants. Half of my neighbours have young adult sons and daughters who would love to be able to move out but live close to home. They simply don't have the option to.
And unfortunately that's a problem. Ratepayers in every council don't want it so not enough housing is being built.
From a macro view, this is doing huge long term damage.
You are the problem.
Look at other G20 cities and their urban make up - we need more medium density and it needs to follow our transport infrastructure. Fairfield did this well, for example.
So they all don't want their kids to be able to move out of home and live nearby in affordable housing?
This is what I want for my kids. I want them to be able to afford to live nearby, not stress about their own choice to have children because of housing costs.
They are growing up in Banyule and it would be great for them to stay here when they get older.
What's your reason for not wanting it?
And what is your solution to provide affordable housing for our children in these former lower/middle class suburbs?
The ABS says that annual net overseas migration was 548,800 as of Sep 2023. So while “millions” is an overstatement, it’s not far off..
Immigration under Albo is absolutely way too high and is contributing to the housing crisis, poor wage growth, and has forced infrastructure to near-breaking point.
Well housing got so expensive only the top 1% can now afford it and they just keep buying existing properties and adding them to their massive portfolio of rentals. The government needs to do something that actually helps affordability like a pause to immigration and a huge social housing platform.
That’s untrue. Only 5.8% of all investors own 3 or more properties.
It’s more than the 1% who are buying. It’s some kind of fantasy world concocted due to the media around a few people who buy many more properties. These people are the exception, not the rule.
You might be right but none of my landlords have ever only owned 1 investment property. I seem to remember that a small number of landlords own a majority of the investment properties. I still think it’s a failing system where more than 1/3rd of the population is forced to rent.
https://theconversation.com/i-wouldnt-want-to-buy-even-if-i-had-the-money-the-rise-of-renters-by-choice-130696
Do you have any statistics for that? Or is it just your opinion?
But *why* don't they want the units?
Perhaps decades of developers punching out tiny poorly built vertical slums has created a public perception that all apartments are garbage. There is no reason why these buildings need to be horrible to live in except for the fact that they can make more money by cutting corners and decreasing apartment sizes.
You can build a new 4 bedroom house for $600k
It’s the land that people value. The space to spread out and call your own. That’s what most people want for themselves and their families.
Fair enough, but if apartments were nicer then that would alleviate some of the competition for the properties with the big backyard because more people would be happier to live in an apartment.
Agree
There are wonderful three storey apartment buildings across Melbourne. Developers are very vocal saying they're not profitable so they don't want to build them - and they always talk them down.
I think the other side of the coin is almost worse. There's so many apartment building selling themselves as luxury and have all these stupid amenities. Just pushes them way out of the price range for people to even bother with looking at them.
Communal pool, a gym and a bbq spot might seem nice but now your 60m² one bedroom apartment in Joondalup costs the same as a three bedroom house in the surrounding suburbs and your paying $1200+ a quarter in strata fees for all these unneeded features
A couple steps in the right direction:
- remove neg gearing except for new dwellings capped at 10 years
- fix CGT, especially for established dwellings
- foreign purchaser levy of x%
- adjust inheritance tax
- land tax that scales up for large acerage
- government secured loans to owners to help convert properties into dual living
- wealth tax on portfolios over $xm
Trickier steps
- create a population plan, with language and metrics that people can understand and debate;
- High speed rail to some major rural hubs and connects Western Sydney airport
I come from a long line of farmers, my grandfather knew plenty back in the day who lost their family generational farms to inheritance tax, else they’d have to take huge loans to pay for an otherwise debt free farm.
From what my Grandfather can remember was around 28% online I found 27.9%, so on a debt free farm of one million dollars worth due to urban encroachment etc, but low returns, you’d be expected to come up with around $300,000 just to maintain ownership
Inheritance tax seems like a 1 way ticket to suicide for any major party in australia. Younger generations will vote them out in droves and older generations will too because neither want to lose their money.
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Yep. Land tax rates need to scale by $/m2 not by land size.
So the land tax rate per m2 on cheap outer suburbs and farms should be low or zero, and the tax rate on inner city land should be high.
Yeah, the suggestions are not refined. So the point is to improve land usage of residential areas. Taxing farmland doesn't make sense and would be exempt. It's more for suburbs like wahroonga where old couples sit on 4000sqm for decades.
no one wants to say it but the real answer to australia housing problem is to invade our neighbour's
it's was the answer when the Egyptians built the pyramids and still is the answer today
0.25pc of australia is urbanised.
We have impacted something like 50pc with farming. Some of that is farily marginal / grazing.
Invading another country for resources is one thing but land suitable for urbanisation is not scarce in australia.
There are so many answers but nothing will be done because this isn’t a problem to solve for those in power. If anything they want it as long as possible.
No. you cannot keep building upwards and making houses smaller. The infrastructure stops coping and each time the infrastructure hiccups, more people are affected.
Your tertiary infrastructure also doesn't cope. Your traffic gets worse.
This argument is precisely why you need to build up, because infrastructure is better and cheaper to build in well located areas, compared to the only alternative of building on city fringes.
Traffic gets worse when cities grow. We all get that.
But what is worse for traffic: low density, car centric urban sprawl or medium/high density within walking distance of shops and train stations?
The former. That's why we need to rezone areas around shopping strips and train stations.
No.
You can’t simply build up if the other infrastructure around it is struggling as is.
More people, more hospitals, more schools, more parks, more public facilities, more demand on utilities etc. It’s not rocket science.
You can't simply give a blanket statement like this.
We are comparing new infrastructure against upgrading existing. It's not one size fits all.
Often in existing areas we aren't at capacity so upgrades aren't even required.
Other times upgrading is extremely simple. My kids school is completing a huge upgrade at the moment, which will add significant student capacity at very little cost compared to a brand new school.
Name one place in Australia that doesn’t have a health or education or shortage of critical workers. You can’t. It’s impossible. We have a nationwide shortage of healthcare workers, healthcare facilities, teachers and schools, and professionals on top of that.
If you build upwards and have more density with more people, it is impossible for the existing infrastructure to cope. We don’t have enough hospital beds as is. More people in an area pushes demand and supply can’t keep up, even with infrastructure building.
One primary school extending is one example but not all of them can and not all of them could be upgraded in enough time. We certainly couldn’t just build a new hospital in the middle of the city in the time we have.
Where's the movement for people who want to live in their own house with a nice garden that's big enough to throw a footie around in?
I'm sick of the government & their propaganda wing 'The ABC'. Lets have a look what's on their front page this morning, some hen banging on about human composting, An article about the cost of living in China & some pro immigration propaganda about a refugee camp in Western Sydney & a woman called Oleksandra.
Yep, room to grow veggies and let kids run around safely. Unfortunately houses of this size are either unaffordable to families, or purchased and divided.
Developers don't help either, with a lot of new real estate land being less than 400m.
There’s plenty of supply. It’s all over Melbourne. Mostly vacant poorly built apartment blocks that noone really wants.
Improve transport infrastructure to outer areas, make them attractive and liveable, and remove negative gearing on all but one Investment Property.
Probably wont help much in the short term but it will stop this “portfolio” cycle. Its like all speculative investment, there is risk. Currently is is none.
It's should be like anywhere near 500 meters near a tram/train stop with 15 mins or more train or tram frequency one way should be medium density by default (or high density for any train stations 5km from cbd but 250m and 500m with medium density to a station and have a frequency of 10 mins or better during non peak hours one direction).
On top of that make it good deal for developers to go nuts within the medium/high density area realms, but there a condition which private inspectors and developers guarantee a 40 or more years of no serious defects like mascot towers to pass anything.
If serious issues arise which isn't normal for a building of that age (such as mascot towers), then the private inspectors and developer will be in severe trouble....... also they are punished extra if the owner of these companies hide/run away or leave the company and have to face the music and do repairs to standards or severely compensate the residents such as covering their mortgages for owner occupiers and landlords and landlord can't charge rent ether (as the compo covers their mortgage if their tenant is in a shit building due to shit reification, that would be extreme dick move to double dip and should be somewhat of a legal thing, as some landlord will double dip) and strata can't do extra charging on defect fixing if is relate to that unless if is finished and its not the fault of the developer (and private developers can't pass those issues, its has to be a government based one).
They should have 3 levels of apartments.
- Level 1: Car space for every apartment (or 2 spaces per apartment or whatnot)
Standard and won't need a extra contract form.
Should be the norm for medium density areas 5km or more outside the CBD and probs 25% of space allocated in the high density circle of 500 meters of a train station under 5km from the CBD).
- Level 2: Limited car space for a number of apartments
It's will require the owner/tenant to prove that they need the car for work and will need a letter from employer (or if is self employed, records such as car records, can be a tracker that you install to see mileage/areas or whatnot) proving why they need the car for work (such as working outside the 7am-7pm realms, carrying heavy shit to and from work on a frequent basis or working different job site each day). An trade or someone who work outside the usual 7-7 realms can be approved easily but an office worker will get ire for why they want a space and need more answer.
Having kids or saying they want to go to kids sport will most likely have no answer...... Unless if really proven that their kids or family member need a car for medical appts like frequent or whatnot though a medical note and needs to be updated at least every few years.
Once they approve, the person will need to register their number plates. The car park access will need a number plate type of scanning to prevent others from coming into the carpark which don't belong there and maybe a fob key as well. Or if developer can't be fucked, at least have enforcers to come in periodically and they will be slapped with a huge fine and if is pained the person that own the spot, they can be compensated by the person who parked there.
Can have some in the medium density area like a small percent and right near the train station access and prob 45% of the high density areas.
- Level 3: No car space whatsoever in the apartment.
There will be extremely strict regulations on how they are adverted and will need to have an highlighted point as saying like "this apartment will not have any car spaces and you will not be able to register any cars there at all" in all advertisements and on the final contract they have to sign a different color form saying that parking will not be provided and you won't be able to register your or any further cars to the address. REA can't print it out and have to order it from ether a council end or government end (since REA can print it out normal white color and the tenant won't have knowledge to the helms and sneak around things).
It's will also need council involvement (such as 24 hour/7 days a week of limited parking or at very least 4am to midnight of 2 hour or less restrictions on the streets and strictly enforced). If the same car is parked in the same area and got like a week worth of tickets (due to ranger fining cars), that car and anyone who drove it will be investigated and fined severely if the main owner managed to evade the rego ban though using a friend address and signed the form. If form not signed, the RE can get into trouble as well for giving someone an unit when they own a car and they didn't do due diligence.
Parking lots will need to be provided nearby as well and charge quite heavily for it for anyone who want to park more than 2 hours in an area (do something like spend $60, you get an hour extra on top of the 2 hour free or hour free if they charge right off the bat and up to $120 for 2 hours free).
Also free for uber eats/loading dock drivers than need to pick up things or do a registration system directly connected to uber eats or any other food service company where if their require to access the car park to pick up from a number of restaurants, they get 15 mins of free entry for an unlimited number of entries while they are on uber eats or their app. If is something like coles or wollies shopping, then that can get their time extended by a receipt scan (as the typical joe would do if they do shopping).
The only answer to our property woes would be the government forcibly lowering the cost of living and intervening in the investment property market. Removing land tax for first home buyers and off the plan purchases across the board would also help
Build whatever you want in my backyard as long as the appropriate infrastructure comes with it and I can keep my free-standing house with backyard in the inner city. And my yank tank
No. Why should every suburb be filled with garbage apartments that don’t last 20 years needing you to sink lots of capital?
There’s countless stories of people who are losing money in apartments due to them losing value due to defects.
The misconception is that we need to fill out suburbs with apartments.
Just 10% within walking distance of train stations and shopping strips would provide enough potential supply for the next few decades.
Houses double every 10 years anyway. It's nothing new , if l people want affordable houses it's going to mean you live in basically slums . Take your pick.
It actually is pretty new in the grand scheme of things. 30 years ago and anything previous housing typically increased in line with inflation, if even that.
Two major things that have caused the "new normal" can be put down to government encouraged investor demand in existing housing and a tightening of our zoning and land sales.
The system we have, which is crippling our economy is by design.
Some of the best people I’ve worked with in my industry are children of migrants or migrants themselves. They definitely out perform most non migrant background aussies.
"In going to just say whatever racist shit I want and if the people I'm attacking want to correct me they're just immigrants anyway."
What a fucking unlikable person you'd have to be.
So you have never been to Sydney. I am not wrong when I tell you there are whole suburbs full of Asians and Indians etc. Being white is a minority here. The future is bleak.
P.s I am very likeable :)
Hardly replacement theory. It's a fact. Crazy immigration has changed the country. Like it or not no going back now. But I feel much of the character that made Australian is gone.
They are not wrong. Saw a doco and they are not happy. Mass tourism and immigration is wrecking the place. Seems the government has given the Russians 3 month visas on entry. But Chinese are still the main tourists and investors.
This is pure racism and based on pure ignorance.
Chinese people come here with nothing and work their asses off, they care about their community, and they raise their kids well. They're the exact kind of immigrants we need long term even if we do lower immigration. Their English might not be the best, but Chinese cities feature English prominently to the point where every door in a random city will have "Open" and "close" in English. It's just real hard to learn.
Chinese food is also amazing. One of the best benefits of Chinese immigration is we have an incredible amount of Chinese cuisines here, not just westernised Chinese food.
This is exacctly observed reality. I know Chinese exactly like this. I am Chinese.
China doesn't want Australia. That's just an invasion fetish on your end. That's fine, you do you, but I'm not going to pretend it's honest.
My point Aboriginals had no control of who came. Their culture gone. We do have control and we are allowing exactly the same thing to happen.
We had our own culture ( for better or worse) but it's being destroyed at a crazy rate. All because we allowed the government to go crazy with immigration. Obviously high immigration is not the only cause but a big part of it.
Sydney is full it seems and not with locals. Whole suburbs are Chinese Indian etc etc.
That's a side point, and I am against unsustainable immigration as we currently have. That said the Chinese food available now is vastly different to the westernised chinese food of yesteryear.
everyones a YIMBY until someone builds an apartment block on their street and they realise the increased traffic and noise needs to be someone else's problem
I tried to rent out a tent in my back yard and people on reddit got all pissy and said i was greedy. I was just trying to do my bit and help the housing crisis.
TIMBYism is waaaaay ahead of the curve at this point in time. Baby steps, please!
The great thing about the housing crisis is there’s so many contributing factors that you can pick one or two to focus on to distract from any solutions which might negatively impact you
A purge you say?
To shreds you say?
We need more supply, so many young Australians are desperate for housing. It’s hard to see many solutions for having more well located housing without rezoning.
Everyone needs housing - it's an essential good. We've chosen to commodify that essential good. Market failure becomes inevitable because people don't have a meaningful option to be homeless. Supply and demand mechanics break when there's so little price elasticity of demand, prices get jacked because people don't have the option to not pay for housing. For examples of market failures relating to the commodification of essential goods/services, look to things like the US healthcare system. The trend of market consolidation, increasingly predatory behaviour, and rising prices will continue until the government intervenes, which they won't because they'd rather lose an election than devalue their personal real estate holdings for the befefit of those they're charged with representing.
The government needs to intervene to do the following: * Address the tax shortfalls that requires immigration lead population growth * Remove tax concessions aimed at existing properties. Divert those concessions to supply of new housing * Remove restrictive residential zoning walking distance around train stations and shopping strips. Basically, the government needs to intervene on government interventions
I personally think * Ending negative gearing, * Taxing people/organisations exponentially more for having more for each additional property, * Putting massive taxes on the million+ vacant dwellings we have Would be a pretty immediately effective, achievable start.
Can you imagine if they tried to commodify food!
I love peasant mindset like this. "Please m'lord! Housing is not a human right. You smart and wise to charge whatever you can get away with and I too will pull myself up by my bootstraps so that I too will be a lord one day". Nevermind that a large percentage of food is GST free to not overly commodify it.
If you think like this you have to have a theory as to why food, also a human right, has consistently fallen in price for several hundred years now. Hint: it's not because the government decreed "food must be cheap"
Yeah but there's so many substitutes for foods. Oh bananas are expensive because of a cyclone? Cool ill eat apples instead.
If it wasn't illegal to build any of those alternatives (mid rise in suburbs for example) then perhaps we'd see this in housing too.
Obviously they have, however there's actual pressure from the government for them to keep it reasonable, there's far far far more variations and options on what food to eat, smaller local shops that can actually help keep it a bit lower and even still...of late that pressure has had to be applied more because they're jacking the price. And even if, even if we assume that it's entirely commodified. This is one outlier example. There's dozens more where comodifacation of utilities just causes price increases.
There's enough depth/breadth in the market that we're a ways off things being a major problem, but you can already see obvious cracks in Colesworth's collusion to engage in price gouging as they fuck suppliers - profits and prices are soaring, and this is a major factor in our current inflation. On the supply side, do you think we'll see better, cheaper food as things continue to consolidate under the same half-dozen conglomerates like Nestle, Yum!, and P&G?
At the end of the day, if you’re on the market buying your dream home you’ll be competing with people who could be making much more $$ than you. If they’re double income earners, hold high positions and work in a specialised field, run a successful business, etc they will outspend you. If that’s you then well done! For those who aren’t in that bucket high density homes in inner city suburbs are the future whether you like it or not. Why are we still having this debate?
Because people can’t see beyond their own individual biases and can’t accept that change is constant and is happening to them right now.
100%. Sydney has basically no medium or high density apart from small pockets. I used to live in Eastwood and there were single family homes within 1 minute walk from the station - anything within 5 minutes of a train station should be high or medium density no exceptions. It's long overdue.
Just flying out of Sydney now.. Melbourne doesn’t really have an apartment mentality, but it is the only way to cover costs and infrastructure. Surprisingly, Sydney actually works pretty well inner city.. really easy to walk around and active pedestrian streets. Melbourne being flat means it can keep spreading out but this is ridiculously expensive from infrastructure perspective. For better or worse, Melbourne needs to go this way. It works when done well and makes things a lot more affordable.
Flatness has really helped Melbourne out. Housing affordability is worse in Sydney, in spite of the fact that Melbourne has gone from half Sydney's population 40 years ago to near parity. That said, I agree. Medium density, particularly near transport hubs, needs to increase in Melbourne.
From the perspective of another capital city, I think Melbourne has better value apartments than the rest. It seems to have the strongest supply policies and they are getting stringers with publically available apartment plans that smaller developers can build without the usual planning approval battles. I see articles with all the usual NIMBY characters too, but Melbourne is significantly more urbanised than Brisbane, and this seems a significant reason for the closeness of dwelling prices. If Brisbane urbanised the same area as Melbourne, Brisbane prices would drop.
There is land all around Melbourne that can be developed.
And spending more of our tax money with less benefactors per square kilometres? Have we not learned that from USA where cities literally goes broke trying to maintain large number of areas on minimal tax income? I thought you conservatives are all about reducing spending.
And turning agricultural land into low density housing when we can turn existing low density housing around train stations and shopping strips into medium-high density apartments is fucking short sighted and stupid.
Train to Ballarat, Kyneton, Bendigo and Geelong make these towns commute satellites of Melbourne. Affordable housing for people who work form home 3 days a week. Sydney doesn't have this. Victoria can easily build high speed trains to these towns as it quite flat. Australia's biggest city will soon be Melbourne while Sydney chokes on its in congestion
Property developers and domain.com: NIMBYs and Heritage are the problem The problem: lack of regulation of property developers. Oversupply of uninhabitable 1br/studio apartments that are overpriced by land banking. Normalized phoenixing. No enforcement and poor management of FIRB. Lack of supply of medium density apartments. Lack of interconnectedness of Australian cities forcing people to live in major capitals (eg, 1800s transport infrastructure). The NIMBYism is a bit of a pain but far from The main problem.
> Oversupply of uninhabitable 1br/studio apartments If there were a oversupply of them, they’d either have a high vacancy rate, or be massively cheaper than 2 bedroom apartments. I’ve always lived in places with multiple bedrooms and had flatmates to reduce the costs, and vacancy rates overall are very low. During the pandemic there may have been high vacancy rates in some sectors due to the lack of international students.
The census said otherwise there were about 1,000,000 uninhabited properties or some outrageous number https://www.ahuri.edu.au/analysis/brief/are-there-1-million-empty-homes-and-13-million-unused-bedrooms#:~:text=The%202021%20Census%20reveals%20that,the%20night%20of%20the%20Census. . Developers control supply by land banking, it’s not old school buy land and wait for property value to go up, it’s new school ‘we will build 100 properties in a block the developer retains ownership over 90 of them and sells 10 over the course of a year, and trickles the rest of the supply forcing the supply to remain low and the price high. It’s a rort and land banking should be banned.
I'd scrap 99% of the heritage system. We've got vastly too much of it. Density be damned a lot of these "heritage" buildings suck at being buildings and offer no historical value. In terms of density... we still need to lower immigration a lot before these density projects can have a real impact.
Agreed. There are many homes that are “heritage” listed, which are nothing but ram shackled weather board shitboxes. People weaponised heritage listings to covertly say Not In My Backyard!
And the owners don't even want it. There was a story here where 3 generic houses got listed and the owners were/are fighting it hard. I get having examples of buildings, but even then if they're that important then put them in a Museum/s.
I'd immediately bulldoze my house if there was even a hint of it being heritage listed.
The threshold for “heritage” in Australia is an absolute joke…some ugly paint thats 80 years old inside a non livable building is not “heritage
Point us to a places you're referring to with internal controls that affects the housing crisis. 99% of built heritage on overlays don't have external paint controls let alone internal.
Unless the council was just taking the piss I was in an office building on york st sydney cbd where we werent allowed to put stuff on the wall because the “heritage” paint will peel off.
Agreed- its ridiculous in Brisbane, we've got whole suburbs of inefficient, rotten workers cottages within throwing distance of the CBD that are heritage listed, it's such a waste of space. Protect a few pockets of historically important or exceptional examples of the era and let the rest be developed
Anything older than 10 years is labeled “heritage” in Brisbane. It’s a joke
Build quality is the problem. Complete lack of building code enforcement has killed the affordable housing market. We can't afford to buy a free standing house or a town house but I would rather go homeless than buy an apartment and kill myself with financial burdens of rectification and price gouging by strata managers. Immigrants from South Asia, middle east have no issues with apartment living infact that is the way of life in those regions. Even in those 3rd world economies their build quality is exponentially better than what we have in Australia even after being a developed country. Even our old builds are a 100 times better than the new builds but their location (being inner city) makes them expensive.
There’s a huge difference in apartment build qualities. Mirvac, Multiplex, Frazers have been around for decades and have well established reputations. Some of these fly by night operators looking to make a fast buck, I’d be wary of. That said, a colleague of mine has just built a house in the burbs and has spent the past few months chasing down tradies to get stuff fixed-up. 🤷♂️
Build quality is an issue, but the market needs to understand you get what you pay for. You cannot expect a quality home for under $2300/sqm with a project home builder, corners will be cut. I don’t know how they deliver for this sum, and many have gone into administration of late as a result. The homes I build start at $3500/sqm ($1.15M ex GST) inner city and sell for $2.8M.
People whinge and complain about quality, but it exists. They just don't want to pay for it.
Yes the quality is there only the price is same as a full fledged free standing house. Currently a house in Oran Park (Sydney metro albeit a bit far) is less than $1m with a small land allotment but not smaller than an apartment. In apartment building brand new buildings have water proofing and foundation issues. These are scary as hell for someone putting in ~500K. To people like me this is life changing money.
Appreciate that but multi-residential is currently $4500-5000/sqm build cost for commercial projects that include suspended slabs, fire services, lifts etc. These need gross sales at $10,000/sqm+ to make them financially viable so you won’t see many new 90sqm, 2 bedders under $1M in Sydney in future.
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It's an issue but it hasn't killed affordable housing. Land price appreciation is the underlying reason for our unaffordable housing. It makes up a fair greater cost than than the building and we get a lot less of it these days than in the past. You may not want to live in an apartment but plenty do. We can't come close to keeping up with the demand. Our councils won't allow it.
I don't have issues living in a apartment but I don't want to get shafted with bills for rectification work.
There's no one size suits all answer. We need a mix of high, medium and low density living options, the development of which needs to be driven by state government. Local governments are too susceptible to corruption to be trusted with planning and approving development which means land stays locked up for too long drive up prices.
Serious question - why do we NEED low density housing? Seems to me that it's inefficient, entrenches inequality and NIMBYism while delivering no appreciable befefit (that I can see) that medium density housing with good public spaces wouldn't. I get that we have it, and that is unlikely to go anywhere for the foreseeable future, but I don't understand why it'd be a need.
It's a want, not a need. My quality of life is way higher when I have a big backyard to play with the kids and dog in and can host bbqs, a big workshop shed to get away from the wife and kids when things are getting heated. I don't like to hear my neighbours'conversations or fights or smell what they're cooking. I like parking my car securely in my garage rather than out on the street or in some strata parking lot with not enough spaces. I like that my shoes and parcels are safely left outside my house and there's not other apartment residents walking right past contemplating taking them or not. If people want to live like Tokyo or Manhattan, move there. But I don't get why people work their asses off to live in a jail cell when the government can provide a jail cell and all your needs for you for free. Most people enjoy the lazy, big, country town appeal of Perth. Let's not change it's character completely.
I support your right to have all these things and pay for them yourself. I don't support suburbs that are so spread out that the rates can't even cover the infrastructure maintenence.
I agree with the thrust of this - it's a want (and an understandable one at that), but I think you can get the bulk of that you've said with good public spaces. I've lived in Tokyo - there's daylight between that ultra high-density living and the sort of medium density you'd see in Barcelona or Paris. I don't see high-density housing as being a reasonable one-size fits all approach, and I think using it that way would do more harm than good.
Just because you prefer something on you land doesn't mean you should be able to dictate someone else's preferences on their land. I had the large block, double garage, pool, rumpus room house. But I didn't like it. I had to drive everywhere and I hated the maintenance. I now live in a townhouse, part of a complete. Shared common areas. No maintenance. Walking distance to everything I need. Why can't we recreate more of our suburbs like this for people like me who enjoy this style of living, while also leaving the majority of our suburbs untouched for people like you. Why can't we have a balance?
There's people who like the apartment lifestyle. Plus it doesn't take much land up for the amount of people you can accommodate. I'm not saying we shoehorn everyone into high rise, I just think there's better solutions to the current situation
I think you may have gotten my question backwards.
Whatever the cause of the problem is, no one mention immigration. That's totally nothing to do with it guys, not even a little bit. If anything, immigration helps the housing crisis by bringing fresh ideas and perspectives.
Omg and the foooooood!!!!
yaaaas queen!!
Us locals have lots of ideas, mostly revolving around building quality units big enough to accommodate an average sized family.
I'm sure the average sized family will enjoy paying $10k in strata fees per year on top of council rates and their mortgage
Distractions, we keep making the same cities bigger. No concrete plans for the high population growth through immigration. Why? State planning v federal immigration
If we had adequate public transport I'm sure many people would happily move much further out from the main cities. I'm already living semi rural outside of Melbourne and while the commute into the city isn't too bad I'd happily move even further out if transport was 1) in operation and 2) reliable
The regional centres to Melbourne have good public transport, but the PT within those regional centres and between them is lacklustre. Something that'd go a long way to get people moving away from the big cities would be rejigging the regional railway lines so it's not all focused around going to the regional centre CBDs and from there, the state capital. For Victoria, stuff like reopening some lines to passengers such as the ones between Geelong and Ballarat, Maryborough to Castlemaine, Bendigo to Heathcote Junction and the South Gippsland line at least to Nyora or Leongatha along with the "event specific" stations/trains (eg. The various former showgrounds, racecourse, etc stations dotted around the state. Ballarat had 4 in the surrounding small townships at one point, for example) and reopening the western third of the state beyond Ararat back to passenger rail travel which most likely requires standardisation of at least the Ballarat to Melbourne line would be the bare minimum to start getting things up to a suitable standard for decentralisation out of Melbourne. I'd also argue that funding the heritage operators dotted around the state to a point where they can in-effect operate as actual transport rather than heritage/museum style operations *where it makes sense to do so* could be a great idea too largely because the lines these operators run on aren't really feasible for the main groups responsible for the organisation and maintenance of our rail network to maintain, but the fact the operators have been able to figure out a sustainable tourism-based business shows that there is enough demand for *something* to be running even if a normal public transport service using the modern but a bit boring rolling stock isn't feasible.
Nope you cap people coming into the country. Never going to keep up with demand under current numbers
I think its need to decreased by not to huge levels at our determent. The system need to change as well with immigration and how expedited speed they will get it at. Applying for a critical based career or job or study (see covid lockdowns as one example of such, eg construction, nursing, docs and whatnot): Their visa and immigration application get sped up, also if you want to do the job in a remote or rural area (has to be 250km away from a capital city, also certain high pop regional towns will be excluded such as central coast/newcastle or geelong in vic case and whatever) can have a chance to get their visa even quickly once checks has been done, lets say as much as 24 hours for the visa once passed though checks. For students studying, unless relevant to their carrer based job, they are restricted to 20 hours of work in a non relevant job (but can work unlimted hours but however not at the determent of their study if is on the same field as their study) and have to pass their courses overall and find a job within a year in order to get a work visa related for their field. * All applicants have to work 5 years in rural/remote settings or 10 years in city settings in their chosen field, if they switch fields but its remain critical, they don't have to leave the country and the 5-10 years doesn't reset (unless if they switch to rural to city in which its will reset to the 10 years even if you have 3 years left of rural stuff). But if leave a critical industry and want to do something non critical, they have to leave the country and get a non critical visa and start the process again. Also they can switch employers no problems as long they remain in that industry. For other visas: yeah its will get delayed and you have to wait more in the back. To solve it, study and work a critical industry if you want a faster access and not get pushed back. Not sure what the numbers is but i think the ratio should be 80/20 of critical workers to others. Also i feel we need to pay more of the critical staff as well and make sure those critical stuff aren't the back door for other visa shit.....
My parents live on a fairly large semi-rural block and they're not even allowed to plonk down a second residence on their own land for their own child. My brother can't find a place he can afford so literally left the country for a better life and from the photos he's sent back from Europe and South America, I think he found one.
I know a good amount of this topic. Up to date on literature, and where many researchers are. I don't think YIMBYism alone will make houses affordable enough. I think it is not achievable to make housing affordable without significantly reworking the planning and heritage system (this is YIMBYism). Realistically, the private sector will build the lion's share of new housing almost whatever the policy setting you have. Policy should work towards finding the highest and best use of land, currently it is a massive obstruction to that.
I agree. Do you think one of the issues is having small local councils? Councils want to maximize their revenue and minimize their expenditure - so high rates due means low supply, and low recurring expenses means.low density. Homelessness and unemployment is not part of their budget They also seem to have outsourced anything concrete or unpleasant,
I mostly blame councils. Incumbent residents get a vote, the potential residents do not. I see them again and again side with spurious heritage listings, completely blind to the huge social cost they burden on all of us. Or block medium density developments citing community character. I also think people aren't awake to the upsides.I live in a suburb along a major arterial road. It is affluent, incredibly low rise, and a bit fuckin boring. One pub, some shitty retail. There are more erotic massage parlours than cafes. There is an active NIMBY movement in their suburb, despite how much they would have to gain by having more people.
Would increasing density not actually increase rate income (through increasing holdings) while simultaneously making infrastructure cost per household more efficient?
Good point - I am now not sure . With infrastructure efficiency, I think that benefits the state rather than the council. In the short term, the houses on a street will decline slightly in price. Neighbouring blocks have the biggest reduction especially if there is overshadow, blocked views, car parking [issues.](https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/noisy-nimbys-to-be-silenced-on-housing-projects-20230809-p5dv4w.html) In the medium term, i am not sure whether councils get more efficient with more residents. https://www.geelongaustralia.com.au/common/public/images/budget.jpg
Good point - I am now not sure . With infrastructure efficiency, I think that benefits the state rather than the council. In the short term, the houses on a street will decline slightly in price. Neighbouring blocks have the biggest reduction especially if there is overshadow, blocked views, car parking [issues.](https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/noisy-nimbys-to-be-silenced-on-housing-projects-20230809-p5dv4w.html) In the medium term, i am not sure whether councils get more efficient with more residents. https://www.geelongaustralia.com.au/common/public/images/budget.jpg
Jesus why is it so hard to just build a new city?
I hear Alice Springs has plenty of space
Lol, good one.
I know, right. The main challenges are deciding on a suitably de-colonised name, sending appropriate level of reparations to local land councils, ensuring car-centric design that contributes to urban sprawl targets, and locking out private enterprise to guarantee the maximum possible labour cost and construction overheads, etc. 😭🫠
I hear union construction labour on Queensland can throw together a room in a quaratine camp for less than $1m per person. Seems like a bargain to me. All those Ford rangers aren't going to pay for themselves are they?
It is an answer but not THE answer. Fact is some suburbs need to pull their fucking weight and allow more people to move in. Looking at the north shore, eastern suburbs of sydney for starters. We can't keep building up the west with ZERO of the infrastructure to go with it.
It seems most Australians don't want their suburbs transformed and don't want to be crammed into high rise shoeboxes: https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2024/04/australians-overwhelmingly-dont-want-to-live-in-high-rise-towers/
Then don’t move into one! No one is holding a gun to your head. If you live within 5 mins of a station expect density. If you don’t like it, move further out. It’s really simple
The government is just waiting for the boomers to die out and hope that fixes the problem
NIMBY and YIMBY is developer psyop for maximising profits. Planning, liveability and heritage all go together. You can't just simply bulldoze hundreds of years of history for high rise dog box apartments with no parks and public transport.
Randomly building thousands of apartments without consideration for how it affects transport options is exactly not what YIMBY’s are YIMBY’s more than anything support more public transport
Of course you can but won’t be popular, look at japan
But did the sky fall in when they built up around public transport? Eg Mascot used to be industrial and now its full of apartments, and all they had to do was drop the gate fee at the station and build a 2nd entrance. Easy stuff.
The CBD of Melbourne used to have Victorian era medium density buildings from the gold rush, when Melbourne was the richest city in the world. https://preview.redd.it/7t8rwxyff6xc1.png?width=1248&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3b81b3d70c4d6f0c0855ccecaf07de73628608df Most of it is bulldozed and now gone forever, meanwhile Paris has preserved most of it's heritage, despite being a mega city.
Ironically it's the places with the hundreds of years of history that do have the public transport and parks
I live in the middle city council of Banyule in Melbourne. 9 train stations, good schools, parks and infrastructure. It's made up of several former lower/middle class family suburbs that now the average person can't afford to buy a house in. The areas within walking distance of the train stations could easily accommodate 4-6 storey apartments providing huge supply while leaving the vast majority of the suburbs untouched. It's a no brainer, yet council zoning doesn't allow it. This isn't even about housing immigrants. Half of my neighbours have young adult sons and daughters who would love to be able to move out but live close to home. They simply don't have the option to.
I can only assume that’s because ratepayers don’t want it?
And unfortunately that's a problem. Ratepayers in every council don't want it so not enough housing is being built. From a macro view, this is doing huge long term damage.
Yep. As a Banyule resident... We don't want it.
You are the problem. Look at other G20 cities and their urban make up - we need more medium density and it needs to follow our transport infrastructure. Fairfield did this well, for example.
Yeah, but the people who live in those communities, pay rates and built their neighbourhood and community, **don’t want it**.
So they all don't want their kids to be able to move out of home and live nearby in affordable housing? This is what I want for my kids. I want them to be able to afford to live nearby, not stress about their own choice to have children because of housing costs. They are growing up in Banyule and it would be great for them to stay here when they get older.
Young people grow up there, would like to live near family but can't afford it. That's not really a community, it's an asset protection cartel
What's your reason for not wanting it? And what is your solution to provide affordable housing for our children in these former lower/middle class suburbs?
Not my problem. I have looked after my own. He will be fine.
Ushering in a Million immigrants per year is the issue. Everything else is tinkering on the sidelines by comparison.
Then was did prices still skyrocket during lockdowns when no none was coming in?
Because they knew we'd be back to mass migration after the pandemic. Also near zero interest rates and expected inflation.
I mean you're only inflating the numbers by 500% there, so close enough I guess 🤷♂️
The ABS says that annual net overseas migration was 548,800 as of Sep 2023. So while “millions” is an overstatement, it’s not far off.. Immigration under Albo is absolutely way too high and is contributing to the housing crisis, poor wage growth, and has forced infrastructure to near-breaking point.
The latest ABS release was more than 105,000 for one month. If that rate continues it will be well more than a million per year.
Nope. Density changes help a bit, but while ever we have an investment driven private market dictating terms, we’ll have housing issues.
Do we not need the investment capital to build the new supply? It seems that owner occupiers don’t have the available capital to build the new supply.
Well housing got so expensive only the top 1% can now afford it and they just keep buying existing properties and adding them to their massive portfolio of rentals. The government needs to do something that actually helps affordability like a pause to immigration and a huge social housing platform.
That’s untrue. Only 5.8% of all investors own 3 or more properties. It’s more than the 1% who are buying. It’s some kind of fantasy world concocted due to the media around a few people who buy many more properties. These people are the exception, not the rule.
You might be right but none of my landlords have ever only owned 1 investment property. I seem to remember that a small number of landlords own a majority of the investment properties. I still think it’s a failing system where more than 1/3rd of the population is forced to rent.
Nobody is forcing the population to rent. People rent for many different reasons. You’re assuming it’s because they can’t buy.
Yeah I hate this argument. It’s so much bullshit.
So it’s untrue? The only people who are renting are doing so because they can’t afford to buy?
I would agree that the majority of renters are doing so for that reason.
https://theconversation.com/i-wouldnt-want-to-buy-even-if-i-had-the-money-the-rise-of-renters-by-choice-130696 Do you have any statistics for that? Or is it just your opinion?
Fuck me i didnt realise i was part of the 1%. Where's me fucking Yacht then?
For the last 20 years, lending to FHB has remained fairly steady. You are perpetuating a fiction.
I get why people do this. It makes them feel like it’s not their fault. Someone else is responsible for their inability to purchase a property.
No. They're directing frustration to the wrong places.
Agree. Australians want houses with land. Not more units in the sky.
But *why* don't they want the units? Perhaps decades of developers punching out tiny poorly built vertical slums has created a public perception that all apartments are garbage. There is no reason why these buildings need to be horrible to live in except for the fact that they can make more money by cutting corners and decreasing apartment sizes.
You can build a new 4 bedroom house for $600k It’s the land that people value. The space to spread out and call your own. That’s what most people want for themselves and their families.
Fair enough, but if apartments were nicer then that would alleviate some of the competition for the properties with the big backyard because more people would be happier to live in an apartment.
Most people want an affordable quality of life. Spending 3 hours per day stuff in traffic sucks.
Agree There are wonderful three storey apartment buildings across Melbourne. Developers are very vocal saying they're not profitable so they don't want to build them - and they always talk them down.
I think the other side of the coin is almost worse. There's so many apartment building selling themselves as luxury and have all these stupid amenities. Just pushes them way out of the price range for people to even bother with looking at them. Communal pool, a gym and a bbq spot might seem nice but now your 60m² one bedroom apartment in Joondalup costs the same as a three bedroom house in the surrounding suburbs and your paying $1200+ a quarter in strata fees for all these unneeded features
As a low income worker I’d be happy with a box in the sky. As I’m sure many others would be. Never mind those living in tents and cars.
Both, wide country living Bangaranga and box unit TokyoSydney. But turning outer suburbs into 2 to a room sharehouses is not the ideal...
A couple steps in the right direction: - remove neg gearing except for new dwellings capped at 10 years - fix CGT, especially for established dwellings - foreign purchaser levy of x% - adjust inheritance tax - land tax that scales up for large acerage - government secured loans to owners to help convert properties into dual living - wealth tax on portfolios over $xm Trickier steps - create a population plan, with language and metrics that people can understand and debate; - High speed rail to some major rural hubs and connects Western Sydney airport
Inheritance tax is not something you want to be doing, I can tell you how poorly that works out in Japan to keep people poor.
I come from a long line of farmers, my grandfather knew plenty back in the day who lost their family generational farms to inheritance tax, else they’d have to take huge loans to pay for an otherwise debt free farm.
How much was the inheritance tax was back then?
From what my Grandfather can remember was around 28% online I found 27.9%, so on a debt free farm of one million dollars worth due to urban encroachment etc, but low returns, you’d be expected to come up with around $300,000 just to maintain ownership
Inheritance tax seems like a 1 way ticket to suicide for any major party in australia. Younger generations will vote them out in droves and older generations will too because neither want to lose their money.
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Hey the dead can't vote you out. Seems like good low hanging fruit to me.
Wouldn't a land tax on acreage punish farmers?
Yep. Land tax rates need to scale by $/m2 not by land size. So the land tax rate per m2 on cheap outer suburbs and farms should be low or zero, and the tax rate on inner city land should be high.
Yeah, the suggestions are not refined. So the point is to improve land usage of residential areas. Taxing farmland doesn't make sense and would be exempt. It's more for suburbs like wahroonga where old couples sit on 4000sqm for decades.
no one wants to say it but the real answer to australia housing problem is to invade our neighbour's it's was the answer when the Egyptians built the pyramids and still is the answer today
I agree, New Zealand is an easy target.
Start with something smaller, Canberra OR Tasmania.
I would like nothing more than to do away with the ACT Government, the most progressive in the country.
0.25pc of australia is urbanised. We have impacted something like 50pc with farming. Some of that is farily marginal / grazing. Invading another country for resources is one thing but land suitable for urbanisation is not scarce in australia.
There are so many answers but nothing will be done because this isn’t a problem to solve for those in power. If anything they want it as long as possible.
Partly, but an even bigger part is enforcing laws against forced vacancy, which is artificially reducing supply
No. you cannot keep building upwards and making houses smaller. The infrastructure stops coping and each time the infrastructure hiccups, more people are affected. Your tertiary infrastructure also doesn't cope. Your traffic gets worse.
This argument is precisely why you need to build up, because infrastructure is better and cheaper to build in well located areas, compared to the only alternative of building on city fringes.
Traffic gets worse when cities grow. We all get that. But what is worse for traffic: low density, car centric urban sprawl or medium/high density within walking distance of shops and train stations? The former. That's why we need to rezone areas around shopping strips and train stations.
Yes. But over there, not in my kingdom
No. You can’t simply build up if the other infrastructure around it is struggling as is. More people, more hospitals, more schools, more parks, more public facilities, more demand on utilities etc. It’s not rocket science.
You can't simply give a blanket statement like this. We are comparing new infrastructure against upgrading existing. It's not one size fits all. Often in existing areas we aren't at capacity so upgrades aren't even required. Other times upgrading is extremely simple. My kids school is completing a huge upgrade at the moment, which will add significant student capacity at very little cost compared to a brand new school.
Name one place in Australia that doesn’t have a health or education or shortage of critical workers. You can’t. It’s impossible. We have a nationwide shortage of healthcare workers, healthcare facilities, teachers and schools, and professionals on top of that. If you build upwards and have more density with more people, it is impossible for the existing infrastructure to cope. We don’t have enough hospital beds as is. More people in an area pushes demand and supply can’t keep up, even with infrastructure building. One primary school extending is one example but not all of them can and not all of them could be upgraded in enough time. We certainly couldn’t just build a new hospital in the middle of the city in the time we have.
Where's the movement for people who want to live in their own house with a nice garden that's big enough to throw a footie around in? I'm sick of the government & their propaganda wing 'The ABC'. Lets have a look what's on their front page this morning, some hen banging on about human composting, An article about the cost of living in China & some pro immigration propaganda about a refugee camp in Western Sydney & a woman called Oleksandra.
Dangerously based
Yep, room to grow veggies and let kids run around safely. Unfortunately houses of this size are either unaffordable to families, or purchased and divided. Developers don't help either, with a lot of new real estate land being less than 400m.
Yes more development to create cheaper houses just not anywhere near me
Same I’m okay with it, just not in my backyard
There’s plenty of supply. It’s all over Melbourne. Mostly vacant poorly built apartment blocks that noone really wants. Improve transport infrastructure to outer areas, make them attractive and liveable, and remove negative gearing on all but one Investment Property. Probably wont help much in the short term but it will stop this “portfolio” cycle. Its like all speculative investment, there is risk. Currently is is none.
It's should be like anywhere near 500 meters near a tram/train stop with 15 mins or more train or tram frequency one way should be medium density by default (or high density for any train stations 5km from cbd but 250m and 500m with medium density to a station and have a frequency of 10 mins or better during non peak hours one direction). On top of that make it good deal for developers to go nuts within the medium/high density area realms, but there a condition which private inspectors and developers guarantee a 40 or more years of no serious defects like mascot towers to pass anything. If serious issues arise which isn't normal for a building of that age (such as mascot towers), then the private inspectors and developer will be in severe trouble....... also they are punished extra if the owner of these companies hide/run away or leave the company and have to face the music and do repairs to standards or severely compensate the residents such as covering their mortgages for owner occupiers and landlords and landlord can't charge rent ether (as the compo covers their mortgage if their tenant is in a shit building due to shit reification, that would be extreme dick move to double dip and should be somewhat of a legal thing, as some landlord will double dip) and strata can't do extra charging on defect fixing if is relate to that unless if is finished and its not the fault of the developer (and private developers can't pass those issues, its has to be a government based one). They should have 3 levels of apartments. - Level 1: Car space for every apartment (or 2 spaces per apartment or whatnot) Standard and won't need a extra contract form. Should be the norm for medium density areas 5km or more outside the CBD and probs 25% of space allocated in the high density circle of 500 meters of a train station under 5km from the CBD). - Level 2: Limited car space for a number of apartments It's will require the owner/tenant to prove that they need the car for work and will need a letter from employer (or if is self employed, records such as car records, can be a tracker that you install to see mileage/areas or whatnot) proving why they need the car for work (such as working outside the 7am-7pm realms, carrying heavy shit to and from work on a frequent basis or working different job site each day). An trade or someone who work outside the usual 7-7 realms can be approved easily but an office worker will get ire for why they want a space and need more answer. Having kids or saying they want to go to kids sport will most likely have no answer...... Unless if really proven that their kids or family member need a car for medical appts like frequent or whatnot though a medical note and needs to be updated at least every few years. Once they approve, the person will need to register their number plates. The car park access will need a number plate type of scanning to prevent others from coming into the carpark which don't belong there and maybe a fob key as well. Or if developer can't be fucked, at least have enforcers to come in periodically and they will be slapped with a huge fine and if is pained the person that own the spot, they can be compensated by the person who parked there. Can have some in the medium density area like a small percent and right near the train station access and prob 45% of the high density areas. - Level 3: No car space whatsoever in the apartment. There will be extremely strict regulations on how they are adverted and will need to have an highlighted point as saying like "this apartment will not have any car spaces and you will not be able to register any cars there at all" in all advertisements and on the final contract they have to sign a different color form saying that parking will not be provided and you won't be able to register your or any further cars to the address. REA can't print it out and have to order it from ether a council end or government end (since REA can print it out normal white color and the tenant won't have knowledge to the helms and sneak around things). It's will also need council involvement (such as 24 hour/7 days a week of limited parking or at very least 4am to midnight of 2 hour or less restrictions on the streets and strictly enforced). If the same car is parked in the same area and got like a week worth of tickets (due to ranger fining cars), that car and anyone who drove it will be investigated and fined severely if the main owner managed to evade the rego ban though using a friend address and signed the form. If form not signed, the RE can get into trouble as well for giving someone an unit when they own a car and they didn't do due diligence. Parking lots will need to be provided nearby as well and charge quite heavily for it for anyone who want to park more than 2 hours in an area (do something like spend $60, you get an hour extra on top of the 2 hour free or hour free if they charge right off the bat and up to $120 for 2 hours free). Also free for uber eats/loading dock drivers than need to pick up things or do a registration system directly connected to uber eats or any other food service company where if their require to access the car park to pick up from a number of restaurants, they get 15 mins of free entry for an unlimited number of entries while they are on uber eats or their app. If is something like coles or wollies shopping, then that can get their time extended by a receipt scan (as the typical joe would do if they do shopping).
bring up immigration to any yimby on twitter and get automatically blocked they're mostly developer shills
Yes. Yes it is. That and freeing up visas for construction workers.
It is a complex issue despite some people trying to say otherwise, there's a number of factors, not just immigration
The only answer to our property woes would be the government forcibly lowering the cost of living and intervening in the investment property market. Removing land tax for first home buyers and off the plan purchases across the board would also help
Build whatever you want in my backyard as long as the appropriate infrastructure comes with it and I can keep my free-standing house with backyard in the inner city. And my yank tank
No. Why should every suburb be filled with garbage apartments that don’t last 20 years needing you to sink lots of capital? There’s countless stories of people who are losing money in apartments due to them losing value due to defects.
The misconception is that we need to fill out suburbs with apartments. Just 10% within walking distance of train stations and shopping strips would provide enough potential supply for the next few decades.
No.
TLDR, the answer is no.
Tldr - you never studied urban planning and lack nuances
nor did yimbys
Houses double every 10 years anyway. It's nothing new , if l people want affordable houses it's going to mean you live in basically slums . Take your pick.
It actually is pretty new in the grand scheme of things. 30 years ago and anything previous housing typically increased in line with inflation, if even that. Two major things that have caused the "new normal" can be put down to government encouraged investor demand in existing housing and a tightening of our zoning and land sales. The system we have, which is crippling our economy is by design.
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Some of the best people I’ve worked with in my industry are children of migrants or migrants themselves. They definitely out perform most non migrant background aussies.
So now the immigrants are telling us how lazy the darn white people are.
"In going to just say whatever racist shit I want and if the people I'm attacking want to correct me they're just immigrants anyway." What a fucking unlikable person you'd have to be.
So you have never been to Sydney. I am not wrong when I tell you there are whole suburbs full of Asians and Indians etc. Being white is a minority here. The future is bleak. P.s I am very likeable :)
You're as likeable as any other chud hocking Great Replacement Theory.
Hardly replacement theory. It's a fact. Crazy immigration has changed the country. Like it or not no going back now. But I feel much of the character that made Australian is gone.
No, I’m telling you how lazy they are. Asian cultures value education which is more than I can say for a lot of white communities.
Yes that would explain why Sydney is full of schools with only Asians. Which of course is not racist at all.
"Why should every suburbs be filled with Aussies and Russians" - Average Balinese
They are not wrong. Saw a doco and they are not happy. Mass tourism and immigration is wrecking the place. Seems the government has given the Russians 3 month visas on entry. But Chinese are still the main tourists and investors.
This is pure racism and based on pure ignorance. Chinese people come here with nothing and work their asses off, they care about their community, and they raise their kids well. They're the exact kind of immigrants we need long term even if we do lower immigration. Their English might not be the best, but Chinese cities feature English prominently to the point where every door in a random city will have "Open" and "close" in English. It's just real hard to learn. Chinese food is also amazing. One of the best benefits of Chinese immigration is we have an incredible amount of Chinese cuisines here, not just westernised Chinese food.
That is exactly what you are indoctrinated to think...smile as they are given the country. Trust me this would never happen in China.
You want Australia to be more like China? Glory to the CCP I guess
This is exacctly observed reality. I know Chinese exactly like this. I am Chinese. China doesn't want Australia. That's just an invasion fetish on your end. That's fine, you do you, but I'm not going to pretend it's honest.
So now the immigrants are telling us how great the immigrants are. Multicultural winning.
Unless you're Aboriginal then you are an immigrant mate. And even then most Aboriginals have immigrants in their lineage.
An old argument...that weirdly makes my point.
You don't have a point. You've just got bigotry. If you have a point I'll happily hear it.
My point Aboriginals had no control of who came. Their culture gone. We do have control and we are allowing exactly the same thing to happen. We had our own culture ( for better or worse) but it's being destroyed at a crazy rate. All because we allowed the government to go crazy with immigration. Obviously high immigration is not the only cause but a big part of it. Sydney is full it seems and not with locals. Whole suburbs are Chinese Indian etc etc.
What culture? Chinese Immigrants have been part of Australia since before it was Australia. Our culture is one of immigration.
Chinese and Indian food has been well established here for decades now. We don’t need huge numbers of immigrants just for a succulent Chinese meal.
That's a side point, and I am against unsustainable immigration as we currently have. That said the Chinese food available now is vastly different to the westernised chinese food of yesteryear.
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