A buyer could have to pay GST on a ‘substantially renovated’ home, but there’s often uncertainty about whether a renovation counts as substantial or not. A simple test could resolve the issue.
Booming prices for coastal properties are a mark of our reluctance to reckon with the climate change that is already upon us. We must start to properly account for and act on climate risk.
Grants to home buyers could cost the federal government billions without creating any extra jobs in construction. Investing in social housing is a better approach.
A particular brand of climate denial among coastal property owners presents a conundrum for councils and governments trying to plan for sea-level rise.
Value capture depends on infrastructure increasing the value of affected areas in the first place. Victoria’s level crossing removal project shows the impact on property values can be significant.
The cost of land and, in turn, housing forces people to buy into the rules of market capitalism, making it very hard to ‘downshift’ from consumer lifestyles. But what if we rethink public housing?
The thing about new housing is you need land to build it on. Developers are able to control its release at a rate that doesn’t put downward pressure on prices.
Property prices have soared in the past decade, but much more modest increases in rent, with the exception of Sydney, suggest less of an imbalance of supply and demand for housing as a place to live.
You’d perhaps expect property investors not to mind foreign investors who might push up prices. More surprisingly, house hunters are also more supportive than those who are not looking to buy.
A tax on empty homes will make a modest difference to housing affordability. The sheer wastefulness of our housing system calls for something much more ambitious.
Only 18% of Sydneysiders think foreign investors should be able to buy property. They simply don’t accept arguments that this investment improves housing affordability by increasing supply.