Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at RMIT University, published in the Sydney Morning Herald
"Hot chips. I just can’t say no. Why have one when I could have two, three or more? If I had my way, I’d eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner and still come back for more.
The trouble is, they would eventually kill me.
Property is our national, collective bag of chips. For a privileged group, property has become an addiction that’s getting worse by the day. Why settle for one house when you can have two, three or more? On top of the family home, why not get an apartment to rent out, and another for summer vacation? And why settle for something small when you can have something bigger, if not to start with, then when you are ready for that next extension? I call them MMOOYBYs – those who want to Make Money Out of Your Back Yards.
During the pandemic, the nation experienced a building boom on a scale not seen before. We not only broke records for new dwelling construction, we smashed it for renovations, too. Despite all that new supply, prices and rents went through the roof when Economics 101 would expect the opposite to occur, especially as overseas migration fell through the floor.
We have been building vastly more dwellings than are needed to match population growth for decades, yet real prices and rents keep growing, affordability keeps falling, and ever-increasing government subsidies can’t keep up. We currently have 1 million more houses than households."
Read Prof Hayward's full article at https://www.smh.com.au/national/your-beach-house-is-lovely-but-it-s-killing-australia-20230601-p5dd4m.html
One quote:
Nor does it matter that those holiday homes might have come at the cost of long-term rentals. And why should it, when there is easy money to be had through that largely unregulated, untaxed and rapidly growing channel of short-term rentals?
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