Affordability

<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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Soaring home prices have put first home buyers on the back foot, with affordability now a key issue in the Australian property market.

The continued house price growth has poured cold water on first home buyers, who until the end of March had the $15,000 HomeBuilder Grant as a financial platform when buying new property.

The median sale price for a house has reached over $1.1 million in Sydney in April, followed by $806,000 in Melbourne, according to CoreLogic. Apartments approve the more attractive proposition for first home buyers, with Sydney's median at $755,360 and Melbourne's at $593,121.

The growing property prices has led to first home buyers considering buying interstate, Finder’s First Home Buyers Report 2021 has found.

Finder surveyed 1,028 first home buyers, and 20 per cent said they are searching for their first property in a different state to where they currently live. That equates to around 2,362 first home buyers a month willing to buy in another state to get on the property ladder.

<a href="https://www.urban.com.au/news/vic/urbans-top-suburbs-for-vic-first-home-buyers-in-q1-2021">Read more: Urban’s top suburbs for VIC first home buyers in Q1 2021</a> 
The report found that first home buyers from New South Wales (24%) are more likely to consider buying a property in another state than those living in Queensland (19%) and Victoria (17%).  
Sarah Megginson, home loans expert at Finder, said that many prospective buyers are being lured by cheaper property across state borders.  
“Some first home buyers are looking at real estate in other parts of the country where prices are more affordable, with many feeling the pressure to buy while interest rates are low. 

<a href="https://www.urban.com.au/news/vic/urbans-most-popular-vic-projects-for-first-home-buyers-in-q1-2021">Read more: Urban's most popular VIC projects for first home buyers in Q1 2021</a> 
“The impact of COVID-19 has also caused a spike in demand for regional properties, as residents in Sydney and Melbourne consider swapping city living for more of a laidback lifestyle.  
“With property prices soaring in recent months, it can put additional pressure on first home buyers, who may find themselves priced out of their own city. 

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“This is where an interstate move can work to your advantage as a prospective buyer.  
“Even if you’re not keen to move, a rentvesting strategy – where you buy a more affordable home in a different location and continue renting where you want to live – offers a way to get your foot on the property ladder,” Megginson said.  

<a href="https://www.urban.com.au/news/qld/april-2021-four-homes-to-secure-in-queenslands-city-of-logan-from-230000">Read more: our homes to secure in Queensland’s City of Logan from $230,000</a> 
Finder’s First Home Buyers Report 2021 also found that men (24%) are more likely than women (17%) to be considering an interstate move to get into the property market.
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The growing property prices has led to first home buyers considering buying interstate, Finder’s First Home Buyers Report 2021 has found

Joel Robinson

One in five first home buyers open to buying in a different state

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When the Budget was released this week I kept reading with great interest that the government had failed to address ‘housing affordability’. Truth be known the only thing that the Abbott government actually controls is foreign buyers and taxation such as negative gearing and capital gains tax. With regard to foreign buyers it has been well documented that with regard to this portfolio they have Failed it with a capital ‘F’.
In fairness the Federal government would respond by saying that to the contrary they have already unleashed the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to forensically investigate all property transactions that they believe have contravened the laws. Well if it wasn’t for some bloggers and journalists who pointed this out to the Abbott government foreign buyers would be still running amok. I believe the findings will leave most property observers gobsmacked because I believe we are talking about thousands and thousands of sales.
It’s interesting to note that last week a Senate committee made 40 something recommendations pertaining to housing affordability which included calls to review negative gearing and the appointment of a federal minister for housing, to name just two. Well I have been vocal on not having a housing minister since the Abbott government came to office. More interesting was that Coalition senators immediately rejected the findings – well no surprises there.
If you look closely at the housing affordability debate it can be quickly summed up that data shows we are not building enough high density developments. I wrote about this recently – <a href="robert-simeon/42509-may-6-observer-lots-of-positives-from-discussing-negative-policies-robert-simeon" target="_blank" style="line-height: 1.3em;">Lots of positives from discussing negative policies</a> where the NSW government has recognised the problem stemming from municipal councils who are rejecting developments despite the Sydney population expanding at unprecedented levels. The NSW government wants to merge councils to free up more development to meet Sydney’s population explosion.
Should the NSW government be successful with its charter then the price of apartments will obviously come down as too rents. So I’m somewhat mystified why property investors are driving up apartment prices when such a major announcement is pending.
The Abbott government needs to take a very serious look at the legislation that allows foreign buyers to purchase off the plan. I believe that it would be sage for the Abbott government to place foreign buyers on – hold until the ATO has released its preliminary findings. What we are seeing today is Chinese developers out bidding the local developers simply because the off – the – plan legislation allows them to sell directly overseas to foreign buyers so these properties never even hit the Australian market. A vast number of these properties are land banked so they remain vacant which again is self-defeating and ludicrous that this can happen in this day and age.
This week we also read that there are foreign criminals trying to buy Australian real estate to wash their money by investing in real estate. Well this is nothing new as I have heard a few examples of agents who questioned some foreign buyers who expressed interest in landmark Sydney residences.
Thailand has had serious problems with the Russian mafia who have bought up significant parts of that country where the government announced a few years ago that it was cracking down hard on these transactions. This is a global problem where Australia immediately needs to take decisive action which also means tightening the many legal loopholes.
Take the recent divestment order on Villa del Mare where it was found that the Chinese purchaser did not have Australian residence. When I wrote about this <a href="/expert-insights/40832-treasurer-joe-s-villa-del-nightmare-robert-simeon" target="_blank">Treasurer Joe’s Villa del Nightmare</a> on March 5 I said that the purchaser would find an Australian resident to buy the property. Well <a href="/news/42684-lola-wang-li-buys-villa-del-mare-the-39-million-point-piper-firb-home" target="_blank">Australian buyer Lola Li emerges with Villa del Mare, the $39 million Point Piper FIRB home.</a>
The good news to come from this debate is that for the first time “the dogs are barking” and the Abbott government has to act – and act fast. Finding a viable solution to foreign buyers will prove a much harder assignment than towing back boats.
With regard to new developments, for starters there should be a selling ratio of foreign buyers to Australian residents established.
The Australian property industry has never before encountered such a debate and much of this stems from record low global cash rates. Investors are chasing returns and Sydney is one of the hottest property markets on the globe.
The Abbott government needs to send a very clear message to foreign buyers which is either buy or bye?
Mosman Market
When you look closely at the actual numbers of properties on the market you will struggle to say that the market is booming or bubbling as some prefer to say. Historically when markets are booming this coincides with record volumes being on the market which is otherwise known as a feeding frenzy. The confusing parts about our local markets are that stock levels are down 50 per cent on this time last year or thereabouts.
MOSMAN – 2088
• Number of houses on the market this time last year – 102
• Number of houses on the market last week – 57
• Number of houses on the market this week – 57
• Number of apartments on the market this time last year – 72
• Number of apartments on the market last week – 50
• Number of apartments on the market this week – 49
CREMORNE – 2090
• Number of houses on the market this time last year – 7
• Number of houses on the market last week – 3
• Number of houses on the market this week – 4
• Number of apartments on the market this time last year – 27
• Number of apartments on the market last week – 13
• Number of apartments on the market this week – 10
NEUTRAL BAY – 2089
• Number of houses on the market this time last year – 7
• Number of houses on the market last week – 3
•Number of houses on the market this week – 3
• Number of apartments on the market this time last year– 48
• Number of apartments on the market last week – 31
• Number of apartments on the market this week – 27
 Source: APM Price Finder
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Do we tell foreign buyers to buy or bye? Robert Simeon

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Commentary on the affordability issue has become so twisted that media is quoting Sydney’s median house price as a relevant topic.
We recently had the Australian Financial Review, which should know better, writing about the level of income needed by a first-home buyer to afford the median Sydney dwelling, as well as the median-priced dwelling in the other capital cities.
My question is: how is this in any way relevant to the issue of affordability?
First-home buyers don’t buy at the median price, not in Sydney, nor in Melbourne, nor anywhere else in Australia. First-home buyers buy below the median, indeed well below it. Always have done – and, I dare say, always will.
The median price for dwellings in the major cities at the moment are $750,000 in Sydney, $570,000 in Melbourne, $465,000 in Brisbane and $510,000 in Perth. According to CoreLogic RP Data, the median across the eight state and territory capital cities is $570,000.
But the average first-home-buyer loan at present is $334,800, according to the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Assuming the typical first-timer has a 10% deposit, this means the median dwelling price for a first-home buyer is around $370,000.
Given that 25% of all residential sales are being made to first-time buyers, there’s are a lot of novice buyers out there acquiring properties at the lower end of the market. In the past year, around 120,000 Australians have made a first-time purchase.
Those numbers are relevant to the discussion. The median price in our most expensive city is not.
The Real Estate Institute of Western Australia published some numbers this week that also have some relevance to the topic. Good to see those people putting out material that’s actually useful to a sensible debate, unlike some of their recent talk-down-the-market nonsense.
REIWA president David Airey said, quite rightly, that it was important not to use the median price as the guide for the costs of getting into the market for first-home buyers and others.
Airey said the median was the middle point in the market and that half of all sales were under it. This means buyers don’t need to be able to afford the median-priced dwelling to enter the market.
I think it’s sad that anyone needs to make this point, which is so obvious it should be a given in the debate. But the media coverage of the issue has become so irrational that industry people have to go back to kindergarten levels to try inject some balance.
“It’s also important to recognise that first-home buyers, in particular, usually purchase homes well under the median price, with Office of State Revenue data for May showing the median point for entry-level buyers being $450,000 in Perth and $366,000 in the WA regions,” Airey said.
“Even the median purchase price for first-home buyers means that half of all entry-level buyers are paying under these city and country median prices for their demographic.”
Airey said it was more useful for first-home buyers to look at the lower quartile, or bottom 25%, of the more affordable homes in an area to get a better perspective of what was available at more accessible prices.
REIWA data for the year to March shows that the south-east sub-region of Perth through Gosnells, Armadale and Serpentine-Jarrahdale had the most affordable lower quartile, with  houses selling around $370,000. 
Apartments and land were most affordable in the south-west sub-region through Cockburn, Kwinana and Rockingham.
Airey said even within the various sub-regions around Perth there were individual suburbs which were under the lower quartile for their local area.
“For example, the central sub-region has a lower quartile of $550,000, but it’s possible to find houses in Balga priced at around $385,000.
“Similarly, while the median price for units in the south-west sub-region is $277,000, you can find them in Orelia at around $196,000.”
Airey said that buyers should not be put off by the median price for a region or suburb, and look to the lower quartile for opportunities in areas they might initially think are out of their price range based on the overall median.
So true, so bleeding obvious and so sad that anyone needs to stand up and say it. 
 
TERRY RYDER is the founder of <a href="https://www.hotspotting.com.au/" target="_blank">hotspotting.com.au</a>. You can <a href="https://mailto:ryder@hotspotting.com.au" target="_blank">email him</a> or follow him on <a href="https://twitter.com/hotspotting" target="_blank">Twitter.</a> 
Terry was recently joined by Property Observer editor at large Jonathan Chancellor for a webinar on why research is the key to successful property investing in 2015. You can download slides and audio from the webinar <a href="component/content/article?id=42796" target="_blank">here</a>.
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terryryder-YECXbqmri2

Just stand up and say it: Terry Ryder

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With each passing week, the rhetoric on housing issues becomes less and less rational. On topics such as affordability and negative gearing, we have something akin to a form of mass hysteria. Apparently sensible people are making statements which, years from now, will cause them great embarrassment when they look back.
With the media we have in Australia, it’s almost impossible to have a rational debate on any subject. Media runs with its pre-conceived story lines and the only people who get heard are those willing to make outlandish comments that fit the ordained theme – such as, the Great Australian Dream is dead or negative-geared property owners are all rich bastards being subsidised by the taxation system or there’s a bubble, whatever that means.
Attention-seekers like economists know how to grab a bit of limelight – pander to media’s obsession with its pre-determined headlines, all of them based around Sydney’s property prices.
The great peculiarity of this “debate”, for lack of a better word, is that it’s happening when we don’t have a property boom or a national affordability problem. We have only one major city with boom-time price growth (although tame relative to 2002-2003). 
If that one city was Perth or Adelaide, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Media is all agog about it because the one elevated city market is Sydney and we have a hopelessly Sydney-centric media.
Around 20 million Australians live outside Sydney and they’re all watching this runaway hysteria about real estate with mounting bemusement. 
It’s difficult for people in Perth and Hobart, where markets are going backwards, to relate to the notion that they need to accept lending restrictions because Sydney allegedly has a problem. 
In Darwin, where vacancies are high, rents have dropped 5% in the past year and apartment prices are down 4%, people are wondering what the fuss is all about.
And in Canberra, which is producing similar statistics to Darwin, they must be scratching their heads at the panic that’s driving commentary three hours up the road in Sydney.
One of the absurdities of the affordability “debate” is that people keep referring to the Sydney median price and how first-time buyers can’t afford it. Sydney’s median is too high for a first-home buyer, therefore Australia has an affordability crisis. 
The latest is serial publicity seeker and failed politician Graham Richardson, who is sadly typical of electronic media celebrities – a big ego, a loud voice and zero knowledge of important subjects. 
His real estate rant on Sky News this week was a cacophony of misinformation. He said “the mean” dwelling in Sydney cost “a million dollars”, when the true figure is $752,000. He said this was “completely and utterly out of the reach of the new player”. But first-time buyers don’t buy at the median price – they buy below the median price, in Sydney and everywhere else. 
A median price of $752,000 means half of all sales are below that figure – and in many Sydney locations it’s a lot below that figure. The No.1 most popular suburb in Sydney for buyers of dwellings is Blacktown (the suburb) – close to 1,000 homes changed hands there in the past 12 months, at a median price for $385,000 for apartments and $535,000 for houses (which means half of all sales were lower than those figures). Blacktown (the municipality) is also the No.1 LGA in NSW for population growth and the No.1 venue for first-home buyers. 
There are hundreds of similar examples across the Sydney metropolitan area. So Richardson’s throwaway line that “it’s a grim future” for buyers in Sydney is nothing more than sound-byte generation from a pointless talking head. 
He did mention that it wasn’t so bad elsewhere in Australia (a brief acknowledgment there is life in Australia beyond Sydney) and he mentioned Brisbane. He said prices were okay there because “there’s been no increase for years.” Again, wrong. But, then, being wrong in a loud voice is how “Richo” makes his way in the world. Sad.
Meanwhile, some attention-seeking behaviour of The Greens has added to the morass that is real estate coverage.
The Greens can be competent advocates of important issues like environment (though less so since Bob Brown retired) but they will never be serious contenders for government while they remain economically illiterate. Their latest clanger is the claim that scrapping negative gearing would raise $42 billion for government over 10 years. It would do nothing of the sort. 
They’ve misunderstood the budget impacts, even without considering the fact that state and federal budgets would be losers if negative gearing was scrapped and people stopped buying investment properties, because of the lost revenue in stamp duty, capital gains tax and land tax. 
The impact on rentals, for people who are unable to buy homes, would be alarming, as it was in the 1980s when negative gearing was (briefly) disallowed. 
But the nation overall and the federal budget long-term would be the biggest losers, because if people aren’t investing to fund their retirement years, the nation has to fund them with pensions – and with our ageing population and the fragile state of the federal budget, that’s not sustainable. 
The Greens have characterised negative gearing as low-income taxpayers subsidizing rich people – and that is simply dishonest. Three-quarters of people who own investment properties are average income earners who own just one property. 
Most of them believe that investing for their retirement is doing the right thing by the nation. In condemning them with this poorly-considered and downright deceitful announcement, the Greens are making a serious error of judgment.
TERRY RYDER is the founder of <a href="https://www.hotspotting.com.au/" target="_blank">hotspotting.com.au</a>. You can <a href="https://mailto:ryder@hotspotting.com.au" target="_blank">email him</a> or follow him on <a href="https://twitter.com/hotspotting" target="_blank">Twitter.</a>
Terry is presenting a free webinar with Property Observer editor at large Jonathan Chancellor on Tuesday June 16 at 12.30pm titled on why research is the key to successful property investing in 2015. Sign up <a href="component/content/article?id=42796" target="_blank">here</a>.
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Housing rhetoric becoming less rational: Terry Ryder

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GUEST OBSERVER
The Westpac Melbourne Institute Index of Consumer Sentiment fell by 0.7 percent in April from 99.7 in March to 99.0 in April.
This is a surprising but welcome result.
Since the last survey there has been intense media attention on housing highlighting concerns around affordability and potential price bubbles. Banks have also increased interest rates for some mortgage borrowers.
Reports on the labour market have been disappointing. The unemployment rate was reported to have lifted back to just below 6 percent.
On the international front, markets have been unnerved by the lack of progress shown by the Trump administration in delivering health care; tax; and infrastructure reform. And recently we have seen a heightening of tensions in the Middle East.
<a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/images/2017/04/13/Screen%20Shot%202017-04-13%20at%209.45.24%20AM.png" target="_blank">Click to enlarge</a>
<img src="https://www.urban.com.au/images/2017/04/13/Screen%20Shot%202017-04-13%20at%209.45.24%20AM.png" alt="">
The iron ore price has fallen by 14 percent over the last month while the Australian dollar has pulled back from USD 0.77 to USD 0.75 over the last few weeks.
Arguably these factors could have been expected to produce a marked fall in confidence, particularly around the economic outlook. And indeed the components of the Index relating to the economic outlook have deteriorated.
Individual state issues have also impacted the overall result more than usual. A change of government in Western Australia saw a boost to confidence in the west while higher commodity prices have assisted sentiment in both Queensland and Western Australia.
In addition, speculation around the upcoming Commonwealth Budget has been benign. Accordingly, respondents are more confident about their finances. Contrast this result with April last year when the Index fell by 4% amid nervousness leading into the May Budget.
Any significant negative shocks in the Budget can be expected to render considerable damage to the Confidence Index.
Despite this better than expected result the current level of the Index is hardly encouraging. April marks the fifth consecutive month when the Index has been below 100 – indicating that pessimists are slightly outnumbering optimists.
Confidence around the labour market deteriorated somewhat in April. The Westpac Melbourne Institute Index of Unemployment Expectations increased by 1.8% from 137.9 to 140.3 (higher readings mean more consumers expect unemployment to rise in the year ahead). This Index has been stuck in a narrow range of 136 to 142 over the last year, well above its long run average of 
130, highlighting the difficulties the Australian economy has had building any positive momentum in the labour market.
There were diverse movements in the components of the Index. There was some encouraging improvement in those components measuring respondents’ assessments around their own finances. The ‘finances versus a year ago’ sub-index lifted by 8.5 percent while the ‘finances next 12 months’ sub-index improved by 2.4 percent. These results contrast with movements in these components in April last year of -3.9 percent and -6.6 percent respectively. At that time there was much more angst about prospects for the upcoming Budget.
On the other hand, expectations for the economy, possibly reflecting prospects for the housing market and global developments, fell. The ‘economic conditions next 12 months’ and ‘economic conditions next 5 years’ sub-indexes fell by 6.5 percent and 2.7 percent respectively.
Consumer attitudes towards spending also fell, the ‘time to buy a major household item’ sub-index down 2.9 percent.
Not surprisingly, confidence in the housing market deteriorated. The ‘time to buy a dwelling’ index fell by 3.3 percent to 96.3. This read is 6.2 percent below the average over the last 12 months and 20% below the peak levels seen in early 2015. The fall in April reflected large falls in the two major markets – Sydney and Melbourne – partially offset by solid gains in Brisbane and Perth. Clearly affordability factors were behind this divergent response.
The Westpac Melbourne Institute Index of House Price Expectations fell 1.1 percent in April – possibly reflecting additional policies from the regulators aimed at slowing house price appreciation. In that regard it is worth noting that in the year to April 2016, in the aftermath of the previous round of regulatory and interest rate changes the Index fell by 16 percent. Since the Reserve Bank’s rate cuts in May and August 2016 the Index has lifted by 19 percent to be back near previous highs. 
The Reserve Bank Board next meets on May 2. The Board is certain to keep rates on hold. As discussed previously the Board is concerned about excessive household leverage which has been boosted by rising house prices. While this concern might be alleviated by a rate hike the real economy is in no shape to deal with higher rates. Considerable spare capacity persists in a stagnant labour market (as indicated by our own index); inflation remains below the Bank’s target zone andis expected to remain at the bottom of the zone; and incomes and confidence are restraining consumption.
The authorities are therefore opting for a policy mix of steady official rates and heightened regulatory controls. As noted with our House Price Expectations Index these regulatory controls, complemented by increases in banks’ rates have been successful in easing conditions in the housing market in the past. 
BILL EVANS is chief economist of <a href="https://www.westpac.com.au/" target="_blank">Westpac</a>.
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Economy in no shape to deal with higher rates: Westpac's Bill Evans

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GUEST OBSERVER
Allowing first homebuyers to cash out their super to buy a home is a seductive idea with a long history. Like the nine-headed Hydra, which replaced each severed head with two more, each time the idea is cut down it seems to return even stronger.
Both sides of federal politics took proposals to the 1993 election to let Australians draw down their super. After re-election, then Prime Minister Paul Keating scrapped it amid widespread criticism. Former Treasurer Joe Hockey raised the idea again in March and was roundly criticised by academics and the media. This month the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) has again resurrected the idea.
House prices have skyrocketed again over the past two years, particularly in Sydney. So politicians are attracted to any policy that appears to help first homebuyers to build a deposit. Unlike the various first homebuyers’ grants that cost billions each year, letting first homebuyers cash out their super would not hurt the budget bottom line – at least, not in the short term. But the change would worsen housing affordability, leave many people with less to retire on, and cost taxpayers in the long run.
It is a bad idea for five reasons.
First, measures to boost demand for housing, without addressing the well-documented restrictions on supply, do not make housing more affordable. Giving prospective first homebuyers access to their superannuation will help them build a house deposit, but it would worsen affordability for buyers overall. Unless supply increases, more people with deposits would simply bid up the price of existing homes, and the biggest winners would be the people who own them already.
Second, the proposal fails the test of superannuation being used solely to fund an adequate living standard in retirement. The government puts tax concessions on super to help workers provide their own retirement incomes. In return, workers can’t access their superannuation until they reach a certain age without incurring tax penalties.
While paying down a home is an investment, owner-occupiers also benefit from having somewhere to live without paying rent. These benefits that a house provides to the owner-occupier – which economists call housing services – are big, accounting for a sixth of total household consumption in Australia. Using super to buy a home they live in would allow people to consume a significant portion of the value of their superannuation savings as housing services well before they reach retirement.
Third, most first homebuyers who cash out their super would end up with lower overall retirement savings, even after accounting for any extra housing assets. Owner-occupiers give up the rent on their investment. With average gross rental yields sitting between 3% and 5% across major Australian cities, the impact on end retirement savings can be very large. Consequently, owner-occupiers will tend to have lower overall lifetime retirement savings than if the funds were left to compound in a superannuation fund.
Frugal homebuyers might maintain the value of their retirement savings if they save all the income they no longer have to pay as rent. In reality, few will have such self-discipline. Compulsory savings through superannuation have led many people to save more than they would otherwise. A recent Reserve Bank study found that each dollar of compulsory super savings added between 70 and 90 cents to total household wealth. If first homebuyers can cash out their super savings early to buy a home that they would have saved for anyway, then many will save less overall.
Fourth, the proposal would hurt government budgets in the long run. Superannuation fund balances are included in the Age Pension assets test. The family home is not. If people funnel some of their super savings into the family home, gaining more home equity but reducing their super fund balance, the government will pay more in pensions in the long-term.
Government would be spared this cost if any home purchased using super were included in the Age Pension assets test, but that would be very hard to implement. For example, do you only include the proportion of the home financed by superannuation? Or would the whole home, including principal repayments made from post-tax income, be included in the assets test? The problems go away if all housing were included in the pension assets test, but this would be a very difficult political reform.
Fifth, early access to super for first homebuyers could make the superannuation system even more unequal than it is today. Many first homebuyers are high-income earners. Allowing them to fund home purchases from concessionally-taxed super would simply add to the many tax mitigation strategies that already abound.
Consider the case of a prospective homebuyer earning A$200,000. Their concessional super contributions are taxed at 15%, rather than at their marginal tax rate of 47%. Once they buy a home, any capital gains that accrue as it appreciates are tax-free, as are the stream of housing services that it provides. Such attractive tax treatment of an investment – more generous than the already highly concessional tax treatment of either superannuation or owner occupied housing – would be prone to massive rorting by high-income earners keen to lower their income tax bills.
What, then, should the federal government do to make housing more affordable?
<h2>Helping fix our cities</h2>
Above all, new federal Minister for Cities Jamie Briggs should support policies to boost housing supply, especially in the inner and middle ring suburbs of major cities where most people want to live, and which have much better access to the centre of cities where most of the new jobs are being created. The federal government has little control over planning rules, which are administered by state and local governments. But it can use transparent performance reporting, rewards and incentives to stimulate state government action, using the same model as the National Competition Policy reforms of the 1990s.
Other reforms, such as reducing the 50% discount on capital gains tax and tightening negative gearing, would also reduce pressure on house prices and could be implemented straight away. Such favourable tax treatment drives up house prices because it increases the after-tax returns to housing investors. The number of negatively geared individuals doubled in the 10 years after the capital gains tax discount was introduced in 1999. More than 1.2 million Australian taxpayers own a negatively geared property, and they claimed A$14 billion in net rental losses in 2011-12.
There are no quick fixes to housing affordability in Australia. Yet any government that can solve the problem by boosting housing supply in inner and middle suburbs, while refraining from further measures to boost demand, will almost certainly find itself rewarded, by voters and by history.
Brendan Coates is senior associate, Grattan Institute and can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/brendan-coates-154644" target="_blank">here</a>.
John Daley<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/john-daley-1870" rel="author"> </a>is chief executive officer, Grattan Institute and can be contacted <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/john-daley-1870" target="_blank">here</a>.
Both are authors for The Conversation.
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jchancellor-FAypfDUnLy

Five reasons the Turnbull government shouldn’t let us spend super on a home

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The Urban Taskforce, a non-profit organisation representing Australia's property developers and equity financiers, supports a diverse housing type to meet the needs of a multicultural society in its submission to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics Inquiry into Home Ownership in Australia.
"A century ago, there were 4.5 people per household in Australia, currently there are 2.6 persons per household. The Australian Bureau of Statistics forecasts a drop to 2.5 people per household in the next 20 years. 
"The smaller household size and increasing mobility of the population means that there are an increasing number of families and households choosing to rent an apartment over buying a home. 
"Sydney has a lower proportion of households renting when compared to similar global cities around the world. In Berlin, 88% of households are renting, in London it is 41%, while in Sydney at the time of the 2011 Australian Bureau of Statistics Census, had 31% of households renting. 
"Sydney is becoming more like other cities in the world with a move from home ownership to rental housing. Clearly this needs an investor market to develop and build rental housing, which is mainly in the form of urban apartments. 
In the Urban Taskforce study 'Who lives in apartments?' 68% of the renters surveyed attribute affordability to the main reasons why they continue renting, followed by location convenience with 60%, and proximity to public transport links with 56%.
"Already more than 50% of residents of strata units in NSW are renting their home. This reflects the growing sentiment that it is actually desirable to live in an apartment or townhouses over a freestanding home. 
"Townhouses, apartments and other higher-density housing types should be encouraged in residential areas would help create a more diverse range of homes as well as increase general housing supply. Smaller lot sizes and less regulation to encourage innovative housing forms such as ‘Fonzie flats’ would also increase housing diversity. 
"The current Sydney Metropolitan Strategy ‘A Plan for Growing Sydney’ anticipates that Sydney will need an additional 664,000 new homes by 2031. This is approximately 33,200 homes per year. 
"According to the NSW Department of Planning &amp; Environment’s Housing Completion and Housing Approval Monitors, in 2012-2013 only 20,339 homes were completed in the Sydney area, and in 2013-2014 only 22,750. This undersupply is resulting in escalating housing prices and financial difficult for the proportion of the population interested in purchasing their own homes. 
"The Urban Taskforce has encouraged the development of more apartments and around railway stations as a way to house the increasing population of Sydney." 
 
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jonathanchancellor-7SQnKwU6yx

Urban Taskforce make House of Reps submission

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GUEST OBSERVER
Housing affordability continues to be an issue of importance to voters, with a recent Fairfax-Ipsos poll showing 69% of Australian capital city residents disagree that housing is affordable for prospective first home buyers.
Different countries have adopted varying approaches to improve access to affordable housing - with governments playing a central role in ensuring people are adequately sheltered, as well as being encouraged to buy housing where possible. In many countries there is an underlying desire by households to own their own home, although renting is the norm in others.
In each case there are specific and sometimes unique-to-that-country approaches that have helped address the issue of affordability. Here’s five.
Government intervenes in the rental market
In some countries there is a general culture of renting for accessing accommodation, rather than assuming all households should achieve home ownership. At times, renting is cheaper than buying. In Germany most households (54.1%) are renters due to the long-term intervention in the marketplace by the government, as well as the accepted culture that renting is suitable over the long-term. In Berlin a total of 84.4% of all households rent. Providing this amount of rental accommodation is a major challenge without substantial government intervention and/or provision of housing.
<img src="/images/2015/06/22/image-20150619-32105-131fh8.png" alt="">
 
For example, in Germany a housing allowance was paid to approximately 783,000 households in 2012, equating to 1.9% of all private households. However most of this funding was allocated to single person households (57%) unable to compete in the open housing market with multiple income households.
 
<img src="/images/2015/06/22/image-20150619-32098-10z2v9x.png" alt="">
Other countries have acknowledged the gap between (a) the maximum amount of rent a tenant can pay and (b) the minimum level of rent a landlord will charge. For example in the US, this gap is bridged by the widespread use of a voucher system which subsidies the payment of rent to private landlords. This system is funded by the US government and ensures tenants can access a minimum quality of affordable housing.
Government provides affordable housing
In Singapore there is a high level of government intervention in the market with the <a href="https://www.hdb.gov.sg/" target="_blank">HDB (Housing and Development Board)</a>providing approximately 80% of all housing in the country. Approximately 90% of households in Singapore own their own home and there are also grants for first time buyers and second time buyers in Singapore.
In Hong Kong about 29.7% of residents live in <a href="https://www.thb.gov.hk/eng/policy/housing/policy/lths/index.htm">PRH (public rental housing)</a> provided by the Hong Kong government. In Scotland a large proportion of the supply of affordable housing is undertaken by housing associations and local authorities. This collectively equates to about quarter of total housing accommodation in the market. However the recent trend for many countries, including Australia, has been the provision of less direct housing by governments.
<img src="/images/2015/06/22/image-20150619-32112-1chk2lk.png" alt="">
Cities embrace higher density living
There are numerous examples of global cities making better use of limited inner-city land supply by encouraging higher density living in high rise units or condominiums, especially in Asian cities including Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore. The provision of affordable housing for purchase or renting is therefore more likely to be achieved in these circumstances due to minimal land use and higher densities. However high-rise living is not commonly accepted in many European cities or in locations with a resistance due to cultural preferences for detached housing.
Public transport allows residents to commute to less expensive housing
The main driver of where a household lives is the need to be close to their workplace. As more affordable housing is usually located away from the central business district, households can buy cheaper homes but the trade-off is additional commuting time to work. When this extended commuting time (e.g. up to 2 hours each way) is combined with improved transport infrastructure such as in Japan, it is possible to access affordable housing in outlying satellite towns and cities where land is more affordable. Therefore governments which improve road and public transport infrastructure also increase access to affordable housing.
 
<img src="/images/2015/06/22/image-20150618-23259-gg7sqj.png" alt="">
Multiple person households are encouraged
Lower demand can be achieved by limiting population levels and underlying demand for housing. But while this may not be an option for many governments, another option is to encourage multiple person households which otherwise would remain as single person households. According to the ABS (2012) in 1911 the average persons per household was 4.5, decreasing to 2.7 persons per household by 1991.
List of countries by number of households
<img src="/images/2015/06/22/image-20150619-21446-109hpsk.png" alt="">
Richard Reed is Chair in Property and Real Estate, Deakin University. He can be contacted <a href="https://www.deakin.edu.au/profiles/richard-reed" target="_blank">here</a>.
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