Well, yeah - that's what they're designed to do. Australian tenancy laws are largely designed to bolster a property market which is focussed around the idea of every family owning their own detached home. Unfortunately, in the last decade or so, things have got overheated in the property markets in Perth (mining boom, huge influx of new workers to the state), Sydney (rising property prices) and Melbourne (again, rising property prices), and the cost of new houses and existing property sky-rocketed. This wasn't considered as being important enough for anyone to pay attention to over here in WA, but when it started happening in Sydney and Melbourne, oddly enough the national media started paying attention.
Popular opinion is we're in the middle of a real-estate bubble (although the federal government is busy trying its hardest to avoid such a label) and nobody is looking forward to what's going to happen when it busts.
Essentially, the issue is that real estate has always been a very low-risk investment here in Australia, which means in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, everyone who had money to invest went into real estate investment, which pushed the prices of real estate up. However, at the same time, there's been a growing trend toward workforce casualisation and under-employment, as well as the death of the full-time job for life - both of which factors mean there's a growing number of people in "good jobs" who aren't able to afford to purchase real estate (in the form of a family home) in a number of Australian cities.
In addition, there's also the problem of suburban sprawl - these days, if you want to build a house of your own, you have to be willing to live on the margins of the city. Meanwhile, the majority of employers are based in the city centres. So you've got commutes of up to an hour and a half each way, on roads which really aren't designed for the amount of traffic they're dealing with, and public transport infrastructure which essentially stopped being looked at seriously in the mid-to-late seventies.
So a lot more people are renting these days, they're renting for longer, and they're people who aren't just the folks at the bottom of the income structure (who can safely be ignored when they say the rental tenancy laws are draconian). It's starting to affect people who are supposed to be in the middle classes, rather than just the non-aspirational working classes.
no subject
Well, yeah - that's what they're designed to do. Australian tenancy laws are largely designed to bolster a property market which is focussed around the idea of every family owning their own detached home. Unfortunately, in the last decade or so, things have got overheated in the property markets in Perth (mining boom, huge influx of new workers to the state), Sydney (rising property prices) and Melbourne (again, rising property prices), and the cost of new houses and existing property sky-rocketed. This wasn't considered as being important enough for anyone to pay attention to over here in WA, but when it started happening in Sydney and Melbourne, oddly enough the national media started paying attention.
Popular opinion is we're in the middle of a real-estate bubble (although the federal government is busy trying its hardest to avoid such a label) and nobody is looking forward to what's going to happen when it busts.
Essentially, the issue is that real estate has always been a very low-risk investment here in Australia, which means in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, everyone who had money to invest went into real estate investment, which pushed the prices of real estate up. However, at the same time, there's been a growing trend toward workforce casualisation and under-employment, as well as the death of the full-time job for life - both of which factors mean there's a growing number of people in "good jobs" who aren't able to afford to purchase real estate (in the form of a family home) in a number of Australian cities.
In addition, there's also the problem of suburban sprawl - these days, if you want to build a house of your own, you have to be willing to live on the margins of the city. Meanwhile, the majority of employers are based in the city centres. So you've got commutes of up to an hour and a half each way, on roads which really aren't designed for the amount of traffic they're dealing with, and public transport infrastructure which essentially stopped being looked at seriously in the mid-to-late seventies.
So a lot more people are renting these days, they're renting for longer, and they're people who aren't just the folks at the bottom of the income structure (who can safely be ignored when they say the rental tenancy laws are draconian). It's starting to affect people who are supposed to be in the middle classes, rather than just the non-aspirational working classes.