Business Today interview on house prices
Feb09
on February 9, 2011
at 5:29 pm
Business Today will broadcast an 11-minute interview by Whitney Fitzsimmons about house prices with myself and Chris Joye of Rismark at 9.30am this Friday February 11 at 9.30am.
Though we differed on many points–especially the industry-standard proposition that population pressure was the main driver of house prices–there was more common ground than I had expected, which is why I’m describing it as a discussion rather than a debate.
If you’d like to watch the interview and you’re not in Australia, Business Today is an ABC Australia Network program and it’s web-accessible as well as being broadcast on a multitude of channels in Asia.
Discussion (5) ¬
Was reading a news story about a new green public housing project when I hear about the “National Housing Supply Council” so after qa bit of googling I came up with some data (sourced from the REIA though) on rental vacancy rates (up until 2009).
What does this show?
http://www.fahcsia.gov.au/about/publicationsarticles/research/researchnews/researchnewsissue36/Pages/national_housing_supply_council.aspx
Excellent, can’t wait to see that. I hope you pounded Chris Joye! Chris talks a good spruik but stumbles when you force him on the issue and show him the facts about the bubble, then he resorts to all sorts of dodgy justification using ‘imputed rent’ and superannuation to inflate incomes to make the most expensive housing in the world seem affordable! Interesting you mention population, it looks like the so called ‘shortage’ has just disappeared according to renowned spruikers Residex. Now they’ve been forced to admit there is a nationwide glut (see below)!
Residex admit the ‘shortage’ was a furphy
Just few months ago there was ‘general shortage of supply’ according to Residex, and now we have oversupply of 22,000 homes! What a howler.
Peak Debt
Aussie Property Bubble Portal
Great article Steve. My son and his wife are thinking of entering the home market as first home buyers. I sent him the link to try and make him think.
On another current matter: We are told that the natural disasters will likely add to future GDP growth. On this basis we should wish for regular disasters to make the economy go gang busters. The one thing commentators seem to miss is that natural disasters destroy accumulated wealth. I believe that the GDP should be discounted for destroyed wealth and only used as a measure of growth once the destroyed wealth has been accounted for. Your thoughts please.
Agreed! The discussions about destruction and growth are weird. There’s creative destruction Schumpeter style, and then there’s catastrophe Queensland style.
There is one positive though–what Marx called “the dead hand of the past” is swept away. New building codes that would have been impossible to retrofit will be easy to implement now.