What Went Right - 05 MAR 2017

[megpie71]

Once again, three stories from my mainstream news feeds about "what went right" rather than "what went wrong".

Victorian stamp duty changes aimed at making housing more affordable for first-time buyers by ABC Victoria (uncredited)

The Victorian state government has introduced a number of new measures aimed at making housing in the state more affordable for first-time home-buyers. This includes removal of stamp duty on properties valued below $600,000 for first home buyers, and a new tax targetted at vacant residential property in Melbourne's inner and middle suburbs.

Pilot hospitalised after self-made plane crashes at Tumut west of Canberra by ABC New South Wales (uncredited)

"A pilot is recovering in hospital after his self-built plane experienced engine failure, crashing into a field at Tumut, west of Canberra, yesterday afternoon." (Any one you can get out of alive probably counts as something going right).

White Night makes regional Australia debut as Ballarat celebrates arts festival by Charlotte King (ABC Victoria)

The White Night festival has had its premiere outside a major metropolitan area, in Ballarat. About 40,000 people attended the inagural event, which featured projections of artwork onto the city's buildings, as well as buskers, poets and performers entertaining the crowds. Among the groups whose artwork was featured were the Ballarat-based Aboriginal collective Pitcha Makin Fellas.

So there's my three for the day. If you've seen something in your mainstream media feeds about what went right, why not share a link to it in the comments?

Comments

[stardreamer]

$600,000 seems absurdly high unless housing all over the state is at San Francisco levels of expensive. IMO anyone who can afford to pay as much as $250,000 for their first house doesn't need extra assistance.

[megpie71]

Welcome to Australia. I'm living in a city (Perth) where our housing prices have actually taken a drop in the last few years (aftermath of the mining construction boom going bust) and doing a quick search on realestate.com.au for anything between 2 and 4 bedrooms (houses or flats) gives prices ranging from about $213,000 through close on $1,000,000. The median is about $400,000. That's for a city with a depressed housing market by Australian standards.

Melbourne and Sydney are in the middle of a housing bubble. Housing prices there have inflated greatly, and in those cities, $600,000 is probably about the median price for a property within reasonable commuting distance of the Melbourne city centre. Housing is a bit more affordable outside the cities, but the downside there is there aren't enough jobs to go around (our rural economy is largely depressed). Add to this the complication of wages largely remaining stagnant for the last ten years or so, while the employment which is available largely isn't permanent full-time work, and you have a recipe for at least a generation of Australians who have largely written off the option of owning their own home short of a lottery win.

Now, throw in Australian rental tenancy laws, which are largely predicated on the existence of easy-to-purchase housing, and therefore basically treat long-term rental tenants as shiftless good-for-nothings.

Let's just say the figures are accurate, the situation is complicated, and a property selling for as low as $250,000 in the current market would be either on the outer fringes of the city (and Australian cities tend to be rather sprawled-out things) or a genuine "fixer-upper".

[stardreamer]

Yeah, that's not what most of the US looks like. Of course, to get something affordable here it's often necessary to look in a "sketchy" (read: ethnically diverse working-class) neighborhood, but that's not the same thing as a slum. And houses in all-white neighborhoods do tend to be overpriced; first-time home buyers here have a hard time too. It's just that I can't look at a house priced at a quarter million dollars and not think "luxury home" rather than "starter home".

[(Anonymous)]

Nah, San Francisco's much higher than that now. I'm in Berkeley, looking for a nice one-or-two-bedroom place to rent, and can't find much under $3000/month. And people wonder why there's such a large homeless population...