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Melbourne goes from among the most to least expensive capital cities
(www.abc.net.au)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
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So increased land taxes and unoccupied home taxes do work to stop prices rising quickly. Now take away negative gearing and CGT discounts and do all of this across the country!
that and a whole slew of minimum standards that are now making being a slumlord cunt very very unattractive
You're kidding right? I know at least 3 people personally who would riot if that happened and one of them is a politician. Line must go up, if line doesn't go up it's time for a new government, if line doesn't go up enough time for a new government, hell if line goes up in the wrong way time for a new government.
I wonder if there will be a riot/strike anyway?
I mean how long before people refuse to work just to pay someone else's mortgage?
may be they should pay their own mortgage? It is should be cheaper than rent if you assume that landlord is not contributing.
You understand that buying a house requires good credit and a sizeable deposit? Both of which are things that many Australians are struggling to earn with the increase in rent and cost of basic needs.
If it were easy to “pay their own mortgage”, don’t you think more people would be doing that?
Even the people with deposits and pre-approved loans are struggling to find homes when well established slum-lords can outbid them by 100k on even the saddest 1x1.
Honestly, I do not know. Twenty years ago, when I bought my house, I had a choice: continue to rent or buy a house in a place from which I had to commute 1.5 hours one way to get to work. I chose to buy a house. I guess many people are not willing to make such a sacrifice. But the relative cost of houses has gone up. Back then, I paid four times my pre-tax yearly salary for it. These days, it would be eight times, so we can’t really compare. But when I look at young people whining about not being able to buy a house while changing their iPhones every year and driving new, expensive cars, it raises a question.
How many young people have you actually spoken to? Or is this just casual observation from Sky News? Because I know a whole bunch of younger people now that I've gone back to uni to switch careers after 20 years in the work force, and I can tell you that they're absolutely struggling.
They're on 2hr commutes one way, facing a job market that asks for senior roles only or entry level jobs that barely allow for any savings. They've got broken phones that they've been using for years because it's too expensive to get new ones. They don't drive because they can't afford upkeep on a car. They either catch public transport or ride bicycles and work their arses off while their employers take advantage of them by firing them when they reach 21, which is the age where employers are legally required to pay you the national minimum salary.
They're bloody thankful when they get offered a job paying $55k/year before tax.
So, I don't know about you but these younger people are massively screwed and we'll be screwed as retirees because there will be more oldies than there are young in the work force.
Ok. Under young I meant < 35 yo. Anyone <21 are just kids, no one expect them to make long term financial decisions. By 35 you should set on the trade and have decent salary. My observation comes from observing "young" guys in IT. Shiny iPhones, but no though about house.
Is “new phones” the modern “avocado toast”?
A lot of the younger generation has given up on home ownership. If they saved their ‘shiny phone’ money, it still wouldn’t put a scratch on the increasing price of buying property. The phone might not be a sound financial decision, but it’s the only joy and control some people can get.
And coming from a ‘young’ guy in IT with a 5 year old phone (that replaced his 10 year old phone when it completely carked it): it’s not the phone that’s making it hard for me to buy a house.
Shiny new iPhone i think he wrote 😉 It's something I've noticed too. People buy the shiny phones, then the head phones, then the screen, the laptop, the glasses, the cloth; spending thousands of dollars in the process. Multiply that each year, as many do, and there is no savings. Nothing growing at all in their accounts. That growth long term can put a deposit on an apartment or a outer suburb house.
Smart kids get jobs in the field that give them free phones and sometimes cars. Bonus points if its a unionised position.
That's a very big generalisation though right; just some blokes in IT with shiny phones.
And, further, even if they stopped getting new phones, that's hardly going to equate to a 5, 10, 20% deposit on a $500k studio apartment. Maybe it's not that they're lazy, maybe they've just given up.
And with AI muscling people out of that industry, can you even blame them?
Dude. You're spouting iphone line? seriously?
A new phone on a plan costs less over a year than one months rent. Get that into your head.
If you're already paying someone elses mortgage, how are you going to save up a deposit to get your own?
Also building more public housing and zoning laws favouring YIMBYs.
The article lists the policy settings as only part of the picture, amongst economic and demographic shifts.
I vote for this guy for prime minister.
And this will kill all small landlords, and we will end-up in situation like UK where single company can own all rental in a city. Dare to say something they do not like, you have to move.
My previous landlord shutdown his Electrical business because it makes less sense to funnel money into keeping a business operational than to just use it to buy more property. When we have small businesses shutting down so people can join the landlord class is it at least worth considering that something is askew in our economy?
If the political will existed then we could tackle monopolistic property ownership through regulation anyway. In the event we get politicians to legislate against their own cashcow then having them legislate against lobbyists shouldn't be that hard.
That's very optimistic of you to think that because this electrician did it, it must be a rational financial decision.
I'll touch base with him next time he is back in town from sailing on his yacht and ask if he is better off.
He is my go to example, not the only former business owner I know who has outright stated working for a living is dumb. It's almost always people working in trades who evangelise the benefits of being a landlord to me, and who can blame them?
Work 20-30 years and be physically broken for whatever time you have left, or work for long enough to get the first 2 or 3 properties bought and then use that as a platform to become a full time landlord.
One of those options is definitely the less physically impactful. This is also the route to personal wealth for a whole lot of politicians, so they are far less likely to close the loopholes they themselves are using for personal enrichment.
In a housing crisis, there shouldn't be any landlords.
If there were no landlords, who would pay for these houses? As has been stated many times, people cannot afford to buy a house with their own money. Landlords give them a chance to get a place to live by investing their money. The problem is that the housing crisis is mostly a creation of current policies. Too many restrictions, policies, and commissions. All of these are sucking money. It is hard to afford to build a house, even if you already own the land. Building something cheaper is not possible because it will not comply with current regulations. F$%it, Australia is not same as it was before, we can't afford licensed plumbers, and shit build by the code. We need to give people a chance to build houses, and then the crisis will go away. (But this will drive property prices down, so the government will never allow that.)
The building codes are less stringent than they were decades ago, hence the drop in quality of housing compared to those built many decades earlier. It's never been easier to get a home built. There's a significant rise in remodeling homes at the moment because those who can afford it are doing it. I know because I do work with architects for these very people.
The hurdle is equity imbalance. The more houses you own, the more you can borrow. The more you own, the more you can rent or put on Airbnb and run as a hotel without having to pay corporate tax.
That and a lack of protection against people who do decide to build because if you get shafted by a builder, there is literally no one, no authority to turn to I'm order to get any deposits back. Much safer to build it yourself but can't if you're working to pay off your loans etc.
If we weren't competing with Landlords driving the cost of houses up to astronomical levels by buying up stock and living on the speculative investment value who would be buying houses... Hmm that's a toughy we might need to get back to you.
Bullshit.