Channel 7′s Today Tonight is doing an item on “Interest Only Mortgages”–like the product that ING has recently promoted–and the whole housing bubble issue.
They are looking for anyone who has been “burnt” by either an interest-only loan, or a loan that was predicated on the expectation that house prices would always rise–as is ING’s new product–who is willing to be interviewed about the experience on camera.
The item is being put together by James Thomas, who did the excellent–and yes, I do mean excellent!–”Changing Times” on debt deflation in February of last year (unfortunately the clip is no longer available online). I can vouch for James’s professionalism and tact: the item will be well constructed, and interviewees will be treated well.
So if you fit the bill and you are willing to be interviewed on camera about the experience, please contact James Thomas.
Darwin houses outstrip those in New York
THE average Darwin house is more expensive than its equivalents in London and New York, a comparison of real estate in cities around the world has found.
Combined figures from Residex and Australian Property Monitors show the median cost of a Darwin house is $549,035 – almost $90,000 ahead of London, where the median price for a two- to three-bedroom house is $462,000.
A two-bedroom, free-standing house in the New York City metropolitan area (not including Manhattan) is about $80,000 less.
Residex head of research John Lindeman said: “It’s quite incredible that houses are cheaper in those cities than in Sydney.
“But it’s caused by the demand for Sydney houses, which keeps outpacing the supply – and that’s not going to change any time soon.”
In Los Angeles it costs almost $250,000 less than in Sydney to buy a house. The peak US industry body, the National Association of Realtors, puts the median house cost at $401,000.
Las Vegas is even more affordable, with the price of a median house at just $166,000.
Darwin’s real-estate market only failed to outstrip the major Canadian city of Vancouver, where the median house price is $612,000.
Mr Lindeman said house prices were driven by population growth, as Australia was the fastest-growing Western nation.
“In Japan, the population is actually falling and ageing, which means there’s less demand for houses,” he said.
“That drives prices down and reduces demand in capital cities, because people want to move away,” Mr Lindeman said. “We have the reverse. Younger people are flocking into our capital cities.
“Population in the UK is also barely in growth – at 0.3 per cent it is virtually at a standstill so it equates to a similar situation.”
burrah,
I obviously agree with you that serious money can only be made by “finding a niche which can be exploited”. Personally I have nothing against people who have done that even if I may be one of many who do not want to “be rich or die trying” at the price of not achieving other personal goals.
What I have a problem with is the system which encourages that. I believe that prof Hudson is right. Something is seriously wrong there – not necessary that the markets are not efficient enough. If somebody is an entrepreneur (industrial capitalist) or highly skilled specialist or just works very hard and is prudent – he/she should have a chance to gain real wealth. But instead of that the financial wealth became the predominant tool in multiplying itself and acquiring the real wealth. I have met so many people who have a lot of knowledge (are physicist, mathematicians or even “rocket scientists”) but there is no demand for they skills – they just write moronic perl scripts or C++ code not serving any real purpose. My classmate who has a degree in biology works in a meat factory checking that food is not rotten. The intelligence of these people should be used to solve real problems like getting enough food for everyone when cheap oil runs out, acquiring sources of renewable energy, trimming down our energy consumption, reorganising our cities so that we do not have to waste hours every day commuting to work.
Prof Hudson wrote:
“Finance was viewed as ancillary to industrial capital, not as an independent class or economic dynamic. Finance capital’s proclivity for trust building and similar predatory behavior was seen as bolstering the increasingly monopolistic “rent-extracting” trend within industrial capitalism.
Yet what has occurred over the past century is an increasing financial dominance over industry, real estate and over government itself. Gradually, finance came to be recognized as an autonomous dynamic making money purely by financial means – as Marx put it, M-M’ rather than by investing in the production of commodities to sell at a profit, M-C-M’.”
The past half-century in particular has seen interest and other financial charges absorb a rising share of property rent, industrial profits, tax revenues and personal income.”
This is from the article already mentioned on this blog.
http://michael-hudson.com/2010/05/neoliberalism-and-the-counter-enlightenment/
Will reasserting the “manual control” like in the Soviet Union work? I don’t think so… Even the New Labour version of manual control lite (Home Owner grants, home insulation, NBN, Emission Trading Schema, Internet censorship) smells to me like yet another “way to serfdom” maybe not a highway like the Soviet one. But we have to ditch the illusion that neoliberalism and the domination of global banks and corporations does not lead to the state of “serfdom” as well.
It is just a slightly different type of serfdom.
So what is the answer? I don’t know. Probably downsizing the financial sector, re-tuning the taxation system, replacing monetary policy with fiscal policy combined with reasserting democracy but I am quite pessimistic whether this will happen. If we do not reassert democracy nothing will work.
Darwin houses outstrip those in New York
“THE average Darwin house is more expensive than its equivalents in London and New York, a comparison of real estate in cities around the world has found.”
The article adheres to the typical supply and demand model.