Housing affordability is a real issue and we need real solutions.
Premier Daniel Andrews is wrong to say young people don’t care about home ownership, but so is Scott Morrison in suggesting housing affordability is easily solved.
Opinion
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Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, who crushed the lives out of his state during the Covid pandemic, is now crushing the housing dreams of young people.
Incredibly, Andrews allowed his socialist side to sneak out last week by claiming young people are no longer interested in home ownership.
Really? I seriously doubt that’s the case. The dream may be elusive and becoming harder to achieve but if the question was posed differently, I doubt that would be the answer.
Who doesn’t want to get on the property ladder and stop paying dead rent money?
Before Premier Andrews gets all upset about being portrayed as the housing grinch and says he was misquoted, let’s read again exactly what he said about young people and home ownership.
After being asked about the soaring median price of homes in Melbourne – now more than $1m – Premier Andrews said: “We are always talking about the great Australian dream, absolutely. But I get a sense — I’ve talked to my kids and their friends — they’re much more focused on perhaps living where they want to live, and ownership is not such a big thing. They are happy to rent with secure terms.”
The Premier has three children, one in their early 20s and two teenagers. A survey of three youngsters with a parent on a high six-figure salary living in Mulgrave probably isn’t the most accurate poll on an issue as important as home ownership.
A few days later a politician of a very different nature politically, appeared to be even more ignorant when it comes to the great Aussie home ownership dream.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison, out selling his Budget on breakfast television, tried to prosecute the argument.
In answer to a question about soaring rental costs he said that buying a house was the answer:
“The best way to support people who are renting a house is to help them buy a house.”
Easier said than done.
I’d say the PM is either ignorant about the fact that his hometown Sydney is the second-most expensive housing market in the world, or he didn’t understand the question.
He ought to take the chauffeur-driven BMW that serves as the PM’s transport and drive to Canberra every now and then. On the way he’d go past the turn-off for Camden South on Sydney’s southwest fringe.
I checked what’s on sale for those renters the PM wants out of the rental market and into home ownership. There are plenty on the market, such as 5 Flinders Ave.
It’s a single-level brick veneer with a garage, three bedrooms and one bathroom.
Inglis real estate is listing it for between $770,000 and $810,000. Camden South is 70km from the Sydney CBD via the M5 and an hour’s drive in good traffic.
Let’s, for the sake of argument, put the price at $800,000; with banks wanting a 20 per cent deposit you’d need $160,000 to put your hand up at auction.
If you go 70km north of Melbourne, the houses are newer and cheaper, such as 17 Stafford St Broadford, with four bedrooms and two bathrooms quoted about the $600,000 mark.
These are existing properties by the way, which rules them out from many government schemes to assist purchase.
Bottom line: the great Australian own-your-own-home dream is still alive, despite the Premier’s research, and it’s too expensive for young renters to get into as the PM suggests.
So, what exactly are they doing about it? There are various state and federal schemes to ease entry points on things like stamp duty, deposits and home loan insurance but the bottom line is we need more houses built.
Politicians need to realise this is a hot-button issue for the upcoming federal election and a Property Council survey found housing affordability would be the biggest factor for people struggling to get into the market.
History teaches us that home ownership in Australia has never been easy.
Generationally, people like my grandparents coming off the depression and WWII rented, as did many of their friends.
In the ’50s my parents rented a tiny cottage on the Adelaide fringe before moving 30km north to a new housing estate called Elizabeth to rent again.
Next was a purchase 15km south and the typical brick veneer on the quarter acre block at Seacombe Heights.
Again, it was a new housing estate on the edge of an urban green zone.
The Adelaide suburbs now extend a further 30km south from where I lived.
Andrews is right when he says young people are these days more choosy, and reluctant to live on the urban fringe of big cities but he’s wrong to suggest they don’t dream about owning their own place.
And Morrison is right when he says it’s better to own than rent — who wouldn’t want to do that?
It’s the answers to the problems that are elusive. Green-dominated councils for a start need to be forced to clear more land.
Urban councils need to be more flexible with planning laws to allow more density in suburbs and state governments need to be more proactive, and not just live off the stamp duty from developers building giant apartment towers.
The great Aussie backyard can’t be allowed to disappear — it’s part of our DNA and needs protection.
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