If anyone needs another sign that today’s ABC has no regard for ordinary people: a reduction in housing prices is framed uncritically as “worse”.
If anyone needs another sign that today’s ABC has no regard for ordinary people: a reduction in housing prices is framed uncritically as “worse”.
If we look at the ABS site for housing occupancy, two thirds of Australian homes are owner-occupied or mortgage. I was astonished by that figure, I’d have guessed the number to be around half or slightly less than half. But since the number is 66%, the ABC can argue that for ordinary Australians, that falling house prices is ‘bad’.
This was telling though:
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) will not release statistics from the 2023-24 Survey of Income and Housing (SIH) due to data collection issues. Despite work to address these issues, the data did not meet the ABS’ high standards for official statistics and will not be released.
It’s weird, right? We have a huge percentage of Australians who are Millionaires, thanks to the value of their houses. They don’t want to stop being Millionaires. For the rest of us, we want the prices to keep coming down to something we can afford to buy. As a general rule, falling house prices is a sign that your economy is in trouble. In the present instance however, I see these pricing reductions as a correction. Housing has been stupidly too expensive for too long.
The key source of a lot of data in this report, and the primary source interviewed, is Cotality Data (formerly CoreLogic). They’re a private, yank ‘business intelligence’ company that’s owned by two enormous private equity / venture capitalist firms (Stone Point Capital, and Insight Partners, whom in turn own $170 billion+ worth of financial service and credit companies… Sure seems like they would have a vested interest in saying that home prices going down is a bad thing. So then they bring in another industry financial service analyst (SQM Data) with similar ties… These groups are just being given a mouthpiece to repeat ‘prices low bad. Negative gearing removal bad’.
Where’s the balance in reporting, ABC?
Not one mention of the Australian housing affordability crisis.
“In Sydney, fewer vendors are listing than a year ago, yet total stock is up almost a fifth. That’s a demand problem, not a supply surge.”
Get fucked, I still see houses where I live sold in under 10 days regularly. The observation of Sydney is just as much a sign that those selling their second or third property are refusing to lower their prices - and can afford to do so. That’s greed. Let them hurt until they have to lower prices to make first home ownership possible for younger generations, that’s the whole point.
Where’s the counter-points from Grattan Institute or similar? Nowhere to be seen. Nice one, ABC.
The observation of Sydney is just as much a sign that those selling their second or third property are refusing to lower their prices - and can afford to do so. That’s greed. Let them hurt until they have to lower prices to make first home ownership possible for younger generations, that’s the whole point.
Exactly - an alternative headline could be “Rich property owners not selling at auction as much because they are holding out for more money than people are willing and able to pay for their property”.
yup, there are two markets, the rich and the poor, the rich are buying houses, the poor are not
the rich are skewing data
Definitely noticing a few properties around here dropping their prices every two to three weeks…
50pc? Is that “percent,” as in the symbol “%”?
Nar, it’s 50 per capita. In other words, less than 50 houses per person are leading to a sale. Tough times.
it should be “pcp”, percentage points 🙄
Wages much too low, prices much too high.
That is the only reason.
Hahahahahha suckit
My entirely empirical (n=1) take on this is that …
OMG SQUIRRELL!
