First Home Buyer Advice

<h2>EXPERT INSIGHT</h2>

The most pointless discussion in real estate is the one about housing affordability. It&rsquo;s pointless, not because it lacks importance or potential solutions, but because the conversation never focuses on the real issues.

Australia has been debating affordability for decades. The media discussion that&rsquo;s happening in 2021 is the same one that occurred last year, and five years ago, and 20 years ago. Go back in time as far as you like and you&rsquo;ll find acres of newsprint describing how young Australians are priced out of the market and doomed to a lifetime of renting.&nbsp;(Ironically, the past 12 months has seen record activity from first-home buyers.) But if you examine media coverage of the affordability issue over the past 10, 20 or 30 years, you will struggle to find any reference to the root causes.

That&rsquo;s why the debate is pointless. If you&rsquo;re not going to discuss the real issues, why bother? The debate is generally driven by politicians skilled at diverting blame and the reports are written by journalists who haven&rsquo;t got a clue.

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Recent decisions by the State Government in Victoria encapsulate why we have expensive housing and difficult issues for first-home buyers. They hiked taxes on investors and reduced grants for FHBs &ndash; thereby making affordability worse at both ends of the equation. More expensive housing and less government assistance. Brilliant.

But Daniel Andrews and Tim Pallas would swear they cared more about FHBs and housing affordability than anyone else in the nation.

This is standard fare from our politicians. When Gladys Berejiklian became Premier of NSW in early 2017, she used her first press conference to claim that improving affordability was top of her priorities. Four years later, most decisions by her government impacting on affordability have made it worse, not better.

It&rsquo;s a similar story with deadly Dan Andrews. He would have us believe that he lies awake at night fretting over the plight of young housing hopefuls, but in so many ways his government has made affordability worse.

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The decision by his Government to hike land tax and stamp duty on investor owners continues the age-old problem of politicians using the housing industry as a cash cow - and thereby making housing more expensive to create.

The problem of affordability can be summarised like this: it&#39;s caused by politicians at all three levels of government&nbsp;milking the housing industry for revenue. Local government does it and the Federal Government does it, but by far the worst are state governments.

Every time a state government&nbsp;needs some extra revenue, they slug developers and investors. They believe there&amp;#39;s little electoral damage&nbsp;in doing that, but ultimately it&amp;#39;s the home-buyers who pay,&nbsp;including first-home buyers.

Australia has a rental shortage crisis and politicians should be encouraging investors. But they continue to discourage investors - hence the ultra-low vacancies and rising rentals in most locations. The State Government in Victoria has made the situation worse. A memorable episode of the iconic British comedy Yes Minister involved the quintessential public servant Sir Humphrey Appleby lecturing about how governments present the appearance of caring about an issue while changing nothing.

You call for an inquiry. Let the inquiry run for a couple of years. Then recommend a Royal Commission. Another couple of years gets chewed up. At the end of the process, identify an unpopular minority to blame for the problem and scapegoat them. Nothing has changed but you&rsquo;ve created the appearance of serious action.

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It sounds farcical but Australia actually did this with housing affordability. There was a series of Federal Government inquiries and at the end of a very low process, devious politicians decided to scapegoat foreign investors as the cause of the affordability problem.

That gave politicians a licence to slug foreign investors with a series of new charges, all under the guise of improving affordability. It was an incredibly cynical exercise - a revenue-raising measure, pure and simple &ndash; and nothing changed about affordability because foreign investors were never the problem.

At the last Federal Election, the Labor Party under Bill Shorten sought to save money in the Budget (they fully expected to win) by proposing to scrap negative gearing and increase capital gains tax &ndash; but tried to dress it up as a measure to improve housing affordability. When asked &ldquo;Does this mean that the value of homes will fall under your policies?&rdquo;, Shorten claimed that it did not. The value of homes would not fall. This begged a follow-up question: &ldquo;How, then, will affordability improve?&rdquo;

Labor front-bencher Tanya Plibersek, in the lead-up to the 2019 election, claimed that the typical property investor in Australia owned 15 or 20 properties. Given that the official data shows that the typical investor owns one or two properties, this was an outrageous lie. But quite deliberate and calculated.

Federal Labor (and many sections of the media) generally portrayed property investment as something akin to a criminal activity, thereby scaring off investors already discouraged by APRA measures.

The outcome is a national rental shortage crisis.

Yes Minister was a documentary, not a comedy. And we will never resolve the housing affordability issue until we understand that the politicians are the problem.

Daniel Andrews and Tim Pallas would swear they cared more about FHBs and housing affordability than anyone else in the nation, standard politician bunk

terryryder

How state governments smash housing affordability: Terry Ryder

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Since the pandemic, developer sales trends have revealed that first home buyers are becoming increasingly focused on quality of life, rather than location.

Urban spoke with Cedar Woods COO Patrick Archer, who provided the following insights about what to expect in property this year.

“[First home buyers] are looking for quick access to green space and a real sense of community”, he said.

<a href="https://www.urban.com.au/new-apartments/lincoln-apartments-100-overton-road-williams-landing" target="_blank"><img alt="" height="3400" src="https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/lincoln-apartments-100-overton-road-williams-landing-765d957441bcbab9cdee57559b9fe828.jpg" width="5100"></a>

According to Archer, 2020 buyer trends that are likely to continue into the new year is the strong renaissance of the suburbs, with buyers taking a keen interest in developments designed around local amenity and wider community living.

This has been true for Cedar Woods’ masterplanned community developments, St.A and Lincoln, who have seen significant interest from first home buyers.

Over the financial year, first home buyers made up 64 per cent of purchases at the 250-dwelling St.A project in Melbourne’s north-western suburb of St Albans.

<a href="https://www.urban.com.au/new-townhouses/st-a-10-mckechnie-street-st-albans?ref=srp_map" target="_blank"><img alt="" height="2004" src="https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/sta-10-mckechnie-street-st-albans-9d1abe1b454fe77398ed1c690a5cfdf6_0.jpg" width="3000"></a>

As first home buyers look at moving to the suburbs and tuning into this new way of life, Cedar Woods has put forward a range of apartments and townhomes so that buyers can choose what works for their lifestyle.

<h2>Is now the time to buy?</h2>

The current low interest rates and government incentives mean that, for many first home buyers, it is cheaper to own than to rent, and new developments are no exception.

“Right now, first home buyers should be looking to take advantage of all the government grants and concessions while they can. Targeting your search to new developments that meet the criteria of the incentives will mean you are getting a considerable saving.” Archer said.

Before the Federal HomeBuilder grant and other state Government schemes come to an end in March, now may be the best time to cash in on the competitive offers by many developers who are also offering additional incentives to buyers and investors.

However, Archer emphasises the importance of knowing your developer.

“Every first home buyer has different needs for their home but one thing they all want is to have complete trust in the developer”, he said.

His advice? Buy from a developer with a track record and long-term commitment to delivering quality projects. 
 

<h2>Cedar Woods’ Lincoln Apartments at Williams Landing</h2>

According to Archer, Lincoln Apartments is designed around local amenity, community and open space, and offers many first home buyers the opportunity to access a range of government incentives.

<a href="https://www.urban.com.au/new-apartments/lincoln-apartments-100-overton-road-williams-landing" target="_blank"><img alt="" height="1333" src="https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/lincoln-apartments-100-overton-road-williams-landing-db709a9bbd193a26b59a6e057637cc46.jpg" width="2000"></a>

Prioritising community living and access to green space, Lincoln Apartments brings both convenience and quality to residents.

Designed by DKO Architecture, the five-storey building features sculptural elements, a rooftop garden, residents’ gym and north-facing balconies.

<a href="https://www.urban.com.au/new-apartments/lincoln-apartments-100-overton-road-williams-landing" target="_blank"><img alt="" height="2400" src="https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/www.urban.com.au/s3fs-public/pictures/article-images/lincoln-apartments-100-overton-road-williams-landing-a506725222c6c442d6e2e9b1c433b5f0.jpg" width="6000"></a>

Two-bedroom apartments in the complex start from $419,000.
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Urban spoke with Cedar Woods COO Patrick Archer, who provided the following insights about what to expect in property this year

First Home Buyer Advice

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