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What you need to know about why house prices aren't coming down (www.abc.net.au)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/australia@aussie.zone
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[–] 24 points 1 year ago (13 children)

nimbies, real estate agents and land lords are running the show

everyone else, like 95% of the population, embraces house affordability

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Let’s say that housing prices come down back in line with historic (pre-2000s) trends, as honestly - they damn well should; how do we not fuck over the millions of otherwise innocent owner-occupiers who suddenly find themselves severely underwater on their mortgages, due to no fault of their own?

    This is the needle we need to thread as a nation, and it’s a bloody hard one.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    We take those Stage 3 tax cuts that the wealthy gobbled up (leave the ones for the lower earners) and use them to pay off the banks.

    Then write legislation to prevent this shit happening again.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    It’s a good idea to start with, but flooding banks with that much money will likely have a massive down-side (think post-COVID19 levels of inflation), and it would be difficult to determine the right amount for each house, given that prices would still be in flux/freefall.

    My initial thoughts were about providing income tax deductions for losses on primary residence (eg. If your $900K townhouse in the ‘burbs devalues to $400K, you can claim the $500K over however many years it’s take you), as long as you continue to service your mortgage, after the initial refinance to determine eligibility.

    But I’m sure a tonne of people would be able to immediately spot loopholes or other reasons why my idea wouldn’t work either.

    It’s not actually all that easy, unfortunately - otherwise you’d think we’d already have had a politician put forward a proposal by now.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Yes and no. There are a lot of owner-occupiers in Australia now who on paper are Millionaires, and they like being Millionaires. They are not going to like it if/when that status is stripped from them.

    If houses nationally suddenly dropped in value by 50%, even if people's mortgages were halved at the same time, I expect the change would still be met with hostility. It's the unspoken truth of housing affordability: far too many Australians are happy with the present housing prices. They're outnumbered by the rest of us, but they are a large enough voting block to decide any election.

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  • [+] 2 points 1 year ago (6 children)
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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Because the rest of us don't have houses and aren't set to lose half our net worth by such policy changes. So, we have a variety of election policies that we prioritise.

    When Labor propose making changes to the status quo, even with mild changes, they have historically lost the election.

    It might be different next time, but it'd be a huge political risk to propose changes again after previous rejections.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago

    Because they own the media. Or they are the ones the media wants to please.

    Seeing TV on the gym always make me wonder who the hell makes that content and who the hell is meant to consume it.

    Are all the viewers real estate agents, house owners paying for renovation or people on yatch trips? I don't see a single normal person on those shows.

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