Why is the Guardian blaming the people who need the homes and not the investors?
They’re not really, the article lists them along side other categories of buyers.
Desperate first home buyers have bid up the price of affordable properties as they face off against investors
Oh, those damn desperate first home buyers! Of course they aren’t deterred by rising rates, their choices are to pay $870,000 for a two-bedroom apartment, or be homeless. In October 2023 I bought a shitty little apartment for $310k (and only got it because the real estate agent said the seller wanted it to go to someone who needed to live in it rather than an investment), by mid 2024 other ones in the same building were going for $430k, one sold a month ago for $587k. It’s fucking insane.
I was pretty poor all through my 20s, I think the most I made at any time until I was 28 was $400 a week, and I never expected to own property until I started saving every extra cent for a hopeful deposit in 2022, looks like I got in at the last second. Good luck to any desperate first home buyers these days.
I just bought a place for 430, but everything I saw prior to purchase had shown the apartment market going down?
Bought a house in early 2021, I didn’t think we were ready but my wife loved the place we found. In retrospect, it was our last opportunity to buy in the region we are in, I can’t afford today’s home prices and rates.
That seems to be what’s happened here.
We bought in 2018, and the value has doubled since then. However, upgrading to a bigger place with room for all our stuff (and our kids stuff) is almost out of reach.
I live in a place that does not allow rentals. It somewhat keeps the price in check but honestly like bank foreclosures and such don’t seem keen on selling very fast. So it feels like a combo of everything else being expensive drives normal folks here who can’t compete with the corps and even then the businesses realize the condos are still useful as value stores. So despite the affordable nature relative to other places im pretty sure I could not buy where I live today. its nuts.
Fucking shocker, how much worse will it get before the gov finally just solves the issue. It’s not like it’s a mystery on how to do it, pretty fucking straight forward tbh. Oh well, till then the middle will be squeezed until they’re no better off than the rest of the working class. Welcome, my middle class friends, to the bottom of the heap.
And who knows what will happen with the current world instability as it affects oil prices (and so the price of just about everything else), and as the number of refugees rises, and if we enter into the war. 😭
It’s not refugees raising the house prices, you’ve been listening to the Murdoch propaganda, my friend. It is hard to avoid. This is literally a created system, by policy geared at benefiting investors. Have a look at how many real estate investors are in politics, currently. When you gear policy towards benefiting investors, don’t build and underfund the competition that keeps prices at bay (public housing), the system looks like this. When you hear “blame minorities / blame immigrants etc” that’s the people with their hands in the pot, trying to create a straw man, so you don’t look at them.
Sorry if it sounded like I’m blaming refugees. I agree with everything you say. But if incoming numbers increase significantly (and we should definitely welcome them as our govt has sat by as the situation has become drastic in some parts of the ME) and we are still not catching up with the housing construction (and the expense to build growing because of oil price volatility), the problem will become worse. Imo, our govt should increase support for well-made prefabricated homes which are now much better quality than they used to be and perhaps even start a govt-owned prefabrication enterprise for social and affordable housing at scale, which would also provide manufacturing and related jobs.
I understand your worries. The wars are going to effect lots of things, supply chains etc. I’m not sure how oil will effect housing here, I’m curious how you see that effecting housing specifically? For real, Genuine question. (I’m not being snide.) The government should absolutely do all of those things, and they easily could. We do already have enough homes, it’s not as much of a shortage, more a problem that investors have hoarded up all the stock. They keep homes vacant, for prolonged periods of time to force the price of rents etc up. The government could easily tax investment properties, to tip the scale back in favour of it being a home first, and an investment second. We have enough homes, currently, and we are building enough homes to technically keep up with demand. It’s being manipulated to overinflate prices, currently, though. On census night in 2021, for example, more than a million homes were recorded as unoccupied. We could easily use homes that are vacant, or old military or mining bases. Theres options for both homeless and refugees. Theres so many options to fix the current, artificially created crisis.
Theres so many options to fix the current, artificially created crisis.> I agree with you.
As to your question re housing and the effect of oil price rising, I think you answered it when you mentioned supply chains. Imo, construction, like all business, will be affected by a rise in petrol costs e.g. obtaining materials, tools, machinery from overseas, local travel and freight costs. All will be passed on to buyers so I imagine that it will become even more expensive to buy a new home unless govt helps out. In addition, the cost of kitting out a home will be more expensive as all appliances, imported furniture and miscellaneous items will also rise in price. These old men and their wars and power mongering are hurting young people in so many ways. No wonder so many don’t want to have children.
and as the number of refugees rises
But I’ve been repeatedly told that increasing demand by importing over a thousand people a day doesn’t have any effect on house prices?
If the number of refugees rises significantly as it is already happening it will have an effect in time, in my view. It is just my opinion. If our governments are going to support the bombing of populations and the consequent spread of destruction over the whole ME region, it will be (and should be) our humanitarian duty to take more refugees. I hope they are planning for this and for climate change refugees from our Pacific region.
