#Nicole Gurran

[indizombie]

At the end of the day, housing in Australia has been always tipped towards property ownership and investment. We see Australians developing a property portfolio instead of shares [and] of course we've propped that up in the form of tax rebates such as negative gearing. You could accuse many of our politicians of crying crocodile tears over this issue. But the value of housing is very important in a macroeconomic sense, and the policy challenge is to recognise its importance but transition us into a housing system that's a lot fairer.

Nicole Gurran, University of Sydney chair of urbanism and housing expert

[avandelay20]

"

Many places have begun to regulate short-stay rentals to encourage owners to return their properties to the long-term rental market.

Nicole Gurran, a professor of urban and regional planning at Sydney University, has been studying this for almost a decade said the link has been well established.

"There's robust research evidence now internationally that the more short-term rentals in an area, the tighter a rental market, and you see that tight rental market flow on in terms of higher rents and higher house prices," she told 7.30.

"The research evidence shows too, that when you take short-term rentals out of the market and return them back to the long-term rental supply, that rents also fall in an area."

The short-stay companies like Airbnb and Stayz believe they've become an easy target and are a scapegoat for more the complex long-term issues that contribute to housing availability.

From Stayz:

"...it's important to remember that regulating short-term rental accommodation in isolation will not solve the housing crisis."

To which the world has responded:

BULLSHIT

Here's the proof:

"

THE NUMBER OF short-term Airbnbs available in New York City has dropped 70 percent after the city began enforcing a new law requiring short-term rental operators to register their homes. There are thousands more listings that could be unregistered.

August: 22,000 NYC listings

September: 6,841 NYC listings

Some short-term listings have been switched to long-term listings,

The number of long-term rentals jumped by about 11,000 to a total of 32,612 from August 4 to September 5.

"

That uptick in long-term rentals is exactly the behavior NYC wanted to see.

Good for you NYC!

Housing is for people. Not for investment.

As for Airbnb and Stayz who have desperately tried to spin this debate as though they are simply scapegoats for bad government planning - we can all clearly see that these companies have ALWAYS been part of the problem.

Can you imagine an arsonist or a murderer putting up such a ridiculous defense when all the evidence points to their guilt?

When a tobacco company is found to be selling products that cause cancer, or a chemical company is found to be polluting the local aquifer and poisoning nearby residents, when a big pharma company is found to be paying doctors to over-prescribe addictive opioids - when the court of public opinion finally sees the evidence that those companies are at fault - those companies have to pay.

And in those cases where RJ Reynolds, Dow Chemicals, and Purdue Pharma were found guilty - NONE of them were so pathetic as to try to play it off like they are just a scapegoat.

That's how pathetic Airbnb and Stayz look right now.

Worse than Big Tobacco.

Worse than Big Pharma.

Airbnb / Stayz are at the root of a failed experiment that has distorted the housing market over the past 10 years and they need to be stopped.

Forcing low and middle income people and families out of long-term housing, forcing countless others to pay obscene increases in rent due to lack of supply, pushing people to live out of their cars or on the streets.

These companies have caused untold suffering and mental anguish - many of those impacted likely resorting to drugs/alcohol or self-harm to escape the pressures.

Yet Airbnb / Stayz claim to be unfairly demonized in this story?

Fuck that noise.

Take em down.

[bestimmigration2018-blog]

Australian Response to immigration: Good-Bad Relationship

The average Australian is at the same time both anxious and supportive of immigration, according to surveys of the nation’s population.

To increase or limit immigration is a polarising election issue amid anxieties over a swelling population’s effect on the environment, congestion, housing prices, and the relative harmony of our highly multicultural society.

Over the past decade, Australia has seen a 2.5 million population rise, with a growth of almost 400,000 people in the last year. The majority of last year’s increase – about 61 percent net growth – were immigrants.

Different studies reveal vastly different attitudes.

While Australians have become progressively more concerned about a growing population, they still see its benefits, according to two different surveys.

Times are changing

In a survey recently conducted by the Australian National University, only 30 percent of Australians – compared to 45 percent in 2010 – are in favor of population growth.

The 15 percent drop over the past decade is credited to concerns about congested and overcrowded cities, and an expensive and out-of-reach housing market.

Nearly 90 percent believed population growth should be parked because of the high price of housing, and 85 percent believed cities were far too congested and overcrowded already. Pressure on the natural environment was also a major concern.

But a Scanlon Foundation survey has revealed that despite alarm over population growth, the majority of Australians still appreciate its benefits.

In support of immigration

In the Mapping Social Cohesion survey from 2018, 80 percent believed “immigrants are generally good for Australia’s economy”.

Similarly, 82 percent of Australians saw immigration as beneficial to “bringing new ideas and cultures”.

The Centre for Independent Studies’ polling has shown Australians who responded supported curbing immigration, at least until “key infrastructure has caught up”.

In polling by the Lowy Institute last year, 54 percent of respondents had anti-immigration sentiments. The result reflected a 14 percent rise compared to the previous year.

Respondents believed the “total number of migrants coming to Australia each year” was too high, and there were concerns over how immigration could be affecting Australia’s national identity.

While 54 percent believed “Australia’s openness to people from all over the world is essential to who we are as a nation”, trailing behind at 41 percent, Australians said, “if [the country is] too open to people from all over the world, we risk losing our identity as a nation”.

Next steps?

The question that remains is what will Australia do about it?

The Coalition government under Scott Morrison recently proposed to cap immigration to 190,000 immigrants per year. Whether such a proposition is the right course of action and will placate anxieties over population growth and be manageable for planners, remains to be seen.

IQ2, the international live debate series, asks whether Australia needs to, ‘Curb Immigration‘ on March 26 at Sydney Town Hall. Labor MP Anne Aly and urban planner Nicole Gurran v human geographer Jonathan Sobels and Indian-Australian writer Satya Marar.

Source: Thenewdaily.com.au

[letsjanukhan]

so much for ‘technology, not taxes’

so much for ‘technology, not taxes’

What about our utes? Our poor beleaguered tradies? Our sacred weekends? Pensioners losing their beloved old runabout? And heavens to Betsy, an end to the under-sixes soccer team in the back of the SUV. All gone. How could life possibly get any worse? – Judy Hungerford, North Curl Curl Building more houses will benefit investors most Nicole Gurran (“Supply will not fix housing affordability…

[news-china-com-au]

联邦预算2021： 关注哪些房产看点？ -

联邦预算2021： 关注哪些房产看点？ –

在即将公布的联邦预算中，专家和行业团体呼吁各级政府在处理天价住房问题上发挥作用，建造更多社会公房、提高贫困人士的租金援助，并改善新建房屋的节能效率。 据Domain网站报导，悉尼大学城市规划师Nicole Gurran教授直言不讳地说，”我们需要政府大规模增加对社会住房和经济适用房的资助。在这方面，过去的几份预算非常令人失望。“ Gurran教授的研究表明，即使在疫情之前，部分低收入工人因负担不起租金而退出劳动力市场，使雇主无法获得低薪员工。 她建议联邦政府提供额外资金，解决原住民和无家可归者的住房危机。 Gurran教授的建议与近期政府的政策形成鲜明对比。联邦政府在疫情期间的一系列刺激房市的政策，包括HomeBuilder计划，以及首次购房者5%首付款购房的 “首次购房订金计划…

[nancydpolardau]

Housing affordability: 6000 homes removed from rental market as landlords turn to Airbnb – The Sydney Morning Herald

53 reading now

An approximated 6000 domiciles have potentially been taken from Sydney’s lasting leasing home market as landlords list possessions on home-sharing websites like Airbnb.

New data in the University of Sydney’s city Housing Lab implies the home-sharing web site could be worsening home price especially in Sydney’s inner city and coastal regions along with the NSW North Coast.

Airbnb landlord Lynne Segal said the home-sharing web site helps her manage to remain static in her Newtown terrace.   Image: Louise Kennerley

An investigation of property listings at April 20 17 discovered about 28 percent of Airbnb listings were entire possessions, while 70 percent were shared and rooms rooms.

“This equates to around 6000 domiciles taken from their lasting leasing market place and 17,000 Sydney homeowners employing their domiciles, rooms or beds for extra money,” said Professor Nicole Gurran.

“When you’re a female in your early 60 s, your decisions are greatly diminished with regard to the task industry”: Lynne Segal with fellow Airbnb landlord Mary Porter.   Image: Louise Kennerley

But, an Airbnb spokesman stated Sydney’s high priced home predates the arrival of the home-share website.

He stated the  vast majority of all Airbnb hosts in Australia set their principal dwelling — the dwelling they stay in — for an average of 30 nights per year.

“That is perhaps not just a dwelling being removed from the current market,” he said.   “It is ordinary individuals with their house maybe when they are on holidays or traveling to make a little extra money.”  

You may now get updates from Company AM News-Letter

Company AM News-Letter

Get the most recent news and updates emailed straight to your in box.

Mature women confront restricted choices

The spokesman said Airbnb had been an “economic lifeline” for landlords like Lynne Segal, that credits the home-sharing web site with supporting her afford to remain static in her Newtown terrace.

Lynne Segal explained she’d not imagine Airbnb experienced jeopardized home affordability in inner city Sydney.   Image: Louise Kennerley

With few career prospects and a minimal volume of superannuation, Ms Segal said her financing looked grim if she turned 60.

“If you are a female in your early 60 s, your decisions are greatly diminished in regard to the career industry,” she said.

Ms Segal’s  principal advantage is her home, de populated once her children left house, which she had renovated to create a sitting room and bathroom for temporary guests.

An Airbnb landlord for a few years, Ms Segal lists two rooms online on the home-sharing web site for $70 and $80 per night.

Ms Segal stated she had kept prices low to attract longer-term renters, and has been currently hosting a English-language student from Italy for 5 months and a university college student from Malaysia for just three months.

Her only criticism was that the untidiness of several guests.

“A PhD student came here for a session from Denmark along with the one issue I experienced with him was he failed to change his sheets for 3 months,” she said. “I needed to toss out them later.”

Ms Segal  claimed she   didn’t wish to get a housemate to a more long lasting foundation: “I wouldn’t   make up to now.”

However she  said she’d not believe   Airbnb  experienced jeopardized home worth while in the area.

Airbnb-type rentals additionally  stand accused of destroying neighbourhood amenity in regions of Sydney — most notably from the Bridgeport condo advanced at Macquarie avenue.

However, Ms Segal  stated serenity jumped from the trunk streets of Newtown, lined with century-old terraces.

“1 / 2 of my neighbours do this anyway,” she said. “Yeah, I am perhaps not even half but everyone’s quite tolerant of this.”

Affect home cost

Professor Gurran’s new exploration additionally located a cluster of Airbnb listings in tourist hot spots — Sydney’s inner city and coastal areas as well as the NSW North Coast — that she explained could have consistently served tourist lodging.

“However, with all the emergence of their web or internet-enabled, home-sharing platforms, so it is easier for property proprietors to record their own dwelling since tourist lodging,” she  said.   “It has the capability to only exacerbate the worth issue and supply for tenants and consumers equally.”

The new   study  is section of a continuing  examine  roughly  Airbnb’s  impact on home cost by the city Housing Lab.

Professor Gurran said the range of listings around Airbnb for total homes   was roughly five times the approximated amount of lease deductions — the ratio of vacant rental stock which has been designed that people rent on a lasting foundation — at the Waverley local government place at April 20 17.

Airbnb listings of overall domiciles in Mosman, Woollahra along with the City of Sydney, along with Byron Bay and Ballina shires, additionally significantly outstripped rental vacancies.

“The effects demonstrate that Airbnb listings possess potential influence on leasing home markets at the Sydney and the Northern Rivers,  together with domiciles less or more forever accessible as tourist lodging, accounting for at least 50 percent of rental vacancy rates at most localities,” she said.

However, Airbnb’s impact on home price remains controversial.

Anthony Meaker, the head of company-owned property direction at McGrath, stated: “We have experienced some isolated episodes of high-value getaway possessions going right down the Airbnb route, predominantly in harbour side and beachside markets.   But, we aren’t viewing an exodus, just isolated instances”

Even a  report,  posted in March 20 17,  by the Tenants Union of NSW suggested   Airbnb  experienced yet to get an impact around the private rental industry: “It is worth noting in passing which decrease income tenants in Sydney’s private market possess mostly already been moved out from the regions in which  Airbnb is found.”

Airbnb’s spokesman said the home-sharing site  proved to be a small participant in the home market place: “In Sydney, that gets the most listings of almost any European city and twice the variety of listings of Melbourne, our community still simply represents a small fraction — around 1 percent — of this local market.

“To put this in perspective, there are near to ten times as most empty houses in Australia as you can find Airbnb listings, ”” he said.  

The NSW administration’s  Short-term Holiday Launched in NSW selections Paper,  released monthly, canvases prospective regulatory adjustments to deal with concerns about the impact of Airbnb such as sound, waste, parking and traffic as well as home value.

“Currently, the principles for dwelling sharing at NSW aren’t fit   for  purpose,” Airbnb’s spokesman stated.   “Today, we’ve got a puzzling and complex patchwork of guidelines which were composed well before the internet even existed.”  

Practice Business Day

from End of Lease Cleaning Melbourne|Bond back cleaning|Bond Cleaning |Vacate cleaning Melbourne https://highpowerclean.com.au/housing-affordability-6000-homes-removed-from-rental-market-as-landlords-turn-to-airbnb-the-sydney-morning-herald-2/ from High Power Cleaning Melbourne https://highpowercleanau.tumblr.com/post/164421161171

[jerrymcguireau]

Housing affordability: 6000 homes removed from rental market as landlords turn to Airbnb The Sydney Morning Herald

53 reading now

An approximated 6000 domiciles have potentially been taken from Sydney’s lasting leasing home market as landlords list possessions on home-sharing websites like Airbnb.

New data in the University of Sydney’s city Housing Lab implies the home-sharing web site could be worsening home price especially in Sydney’s inner city and coastal regions along with the NSW North Coast.

Airbnb landlord Lynne Segal said the home-sharing web site helps her manage to remain static in her Newtown terrace.   Image: Louise Kennerley

An investigation of property listings at April 20 17 discovered about 28 percent of Airbnb listings were entire possessions, while 70 percent were shared and rooms rooms.

“This equates to around 6000 domiciles taken from their lasting leasing market place and 17,000 Sydney homeowners employing their domiciles, rooms or beds for extra money,” said Professor Nicole Gurran.

“When you’re a female in your early 60 s, your decisions are greatly diminished with regard to the task industry”: Lynne Segal with fellow Airbnb landlord Mary Porter.   Image: Louise Kennerley

But, an Airbnb spokesman stated Sydney’s high priced home predates the arrival of the home-share website.

He stated the  vast majority of all Airbnb hosts in Australia set their principal dwelling — the dwelling they stay in — for an average of 30 nights per year.

“That is perhaps not just a dwelling being removed from the current market,” he said.   “It is ordinary individuals with their house maybe when they are on holidays or traveling to make a little extra money.”  

You may now get updates from Company AM News-Letter

Company AM News-Letter

Get the most recent news and updates emailed straight to your in box.

Mature women confront restricted choices

The spokesman said Airbnb had been an “economic lifeline” for landlords like Lynne Segal, that credits the home-sharing web site with supporting her afford to remain static in her Newtown terrace.

Lynne Segal explained she’d not imagine Airbnb experienced jeopardized home affordability in inner city Sydney.   Image: Louise Kennerley

With few career prospects and a minimal volume of superannuation, Ms Segal said her financing looked grim if she turned 60.

“If you are a female in your early 60 s, your decisions are greatly diminished in regard to the career industry,” she said.

Ms Segal’s  principal advantage is her home, de populated once her children left house, which she had renovated to create a sitting room and bathroom for temporary guests.

An Airbnb landlord for a few years, Ms Segal lists two rooms online on the home-sharing web site for $70 and $80 per night.

Ms Segal stated she had kept prices low to attract longer-term renters, and has been currently hosting a English-language student from Italy for 5 months and a university college student from Malaysia for just three months.

Her only criticism was that the untidiness of several guests.

“A PhD student came here for a session from Denmark along with the one issue I experienced with him was he failed to change his sheets for 3 months,” she said. “I needed to toss out them later.”

Ms Segal  claimed she   didn’t wish to get a housemate to a more long lasting foundation: “I wouldn’t   make up to now.”

However she  said she’d not believe   Airbnb  experienced jeopardized home worth while in the area.

Airbnb-type rentals additionally  stand accused of destroying neighbourhood amenity in regions of Sydney — most notably from the Bridgeport condo advanced at Macquarie avenue.

However, Ms Segal  stated serenity jumped from the trunk streets of Newtown, lined with century-old terraces.

“1 / 2 of my neighbours do this anyway,” she said. “Yeah, I am perhaps not even half but everyone’s quite tolerant of this.”

Affect home cost

Professor Gurran’s new exploration additionally located a cluster of Airbnb listings in tourist hot spots — Sydney’s inner city and coastal areas as well as the NSW North Coast — that she explained could have consistently served tourist lodging.

“However, with all the emergence of their web or internet-enabled, home-sharing platforms, so it is easier for property proprietors to record their own dwelling since tourist lodging,” she  said.   “It has the capability to only exacerbate the worth issue and supply for tenants and consumers equally.”

The new   study  is section of a continuing  examine  roughly  Airbnb’s  impact on home cost by the city Housing Lab.

Professor Gurran said the range of listings around Airbnb for total homes   was roughly five times the approximated amount of lease deductions — the ratio of vacant rental stock which has been designed that people rent on a lasting foundation — at the Waverley local government place at April 20 17.

Airbnb listings of overall domiciles in Mosman, Woollahra along with the City of Sydney, along with Byron Bay and Ballina shires, additionally significantly outstripped rental vacancies.

“The effects demonstrate that Airbnb listings possess potential influence on leasing home markets at the Sydney and the Northern Rivers,  together with domiciles less or more forever accessible as tourist lodging, accounting for at least 50 percent of rental vacancy rates at most localities,” she said.

However, Airbnb’s impact on home price remains controversial.

Anthony Meaker, the head of company-owned property direction at McGrath, stated: “We have experienced some isolated episodes of high-value getaway possessions going right down the Airbnb route, predominantly in harbour side and beachside markets.   But, we aren’t viewing an exodus, just isolated instances”

Even a  report,  posted in March 20 17,  by the Tenants Union of NSW suggested   Airbnb  experienced yet to get an impact around the private rental industry: “It is worth noting in passing which decrease income tenants in Sydney’s private market possess mostly already been moved out from the regions in which  Airbnb is found.”

Airbnb’s spokesman said the home-sharing site  proved to be a small participant in the home market place: “In Sydney, that gets the most listings of almost any European city and twice the variety of listings of Melbourne, our community still simply represents a small fraction — around 1 percent — of this local market.

“To put this in perspective, there are near to ten times as most empty houses in Australia as you can find Airbnb listings, ”” he said.  

The NSW administration’s  Short-term Holiday Launched in NSW selections Paper,  released monthly, canvases prospective regulatory adjustments to deal with concerns about the impact of Airbnb such as sound, waste, parking and traffic as well as home value.

“Currently, the principles for dwelling sharing at NSW aren’t fit   for  purpose,” Airbnb’s spokesman stated.   “Today, we’ve got a puzzling and complex patchwork of guidelines which were composed well before the internet even existed.”  

Practice Business Day

from https://highpowerclean.com.au/housing-affordability-6000-homes-removed-from-rental-market-as-landlords-turn-to-airbnb-the-sydney-morning-herald-2/

from High Power Cleaning Melbourne - Blog http://highpowercleanau.weebly.com/blog/housing-affordability-6000-homes-removed-from-rental-market-as-landlords-turn-to-airbnb-the-sydney-morning-herald6575785

[tonyzekeau]

Australia’s home ownership obsession: A brief history of how it came to be – ABC Online

Over time, the Great Australian Dream has meant different things to different people.

But for the better part of a century, any reference to Australian aspirations — great or otherwise — meant buying a house.

A recent ANU poll found more than three quarters of Australians viewed home ownership as part of “the Australian way of life”.

Yet, for housing experts, this fixation on owning a home of your own is curiously specific at best, and harmful at worst.

“Do you need to own?” urban designer Peter John Cantrill asks, with the emphasis on “need”.

For Mr Cantrill, the operative question is: can you be secure where you live?

Countries such as Germany and Sweden have far lower rates of home ownership, he argues, offset by controlled rents or tenancy insurance.

Now, with many Australians facing mortgage stress or rental stress, the great Australian dream has become a nightmare. But is this a crisis of our own making?

For some 60,000 years, Australian land was occupied by Indigenous people. Many were displaced by white settlement.

New South Wales’ first Governor, Arthur Phillip, somewhat naively assumed the British government would own all the land in his newfound colony.

“But what happens very quickly is that people take land without permission,” Graeme Davison, professor of urban studies at Monash University, says.

It wasn’t all anarchy: freed convicts were granted land in the hope they wouldn’t return to England, and retiring officers were gifted land, as were free settlers.

And by the time Governor Ralph Darling arrived in 1825, a more orderly system was implemented.

“From about that point on you begin to get a more systematic freehold land system,” Professor Davison says.

“By the 1830s, owning your own piece of property was an attainable objective.”

One house, one vote

In English cities, land tenure laws and vast church-owned estates precluded many from ever owning their own plot. This was not the case in Sydney and Melbourne.

Melbourne in particular experienced quite rapid subdivision in the 1850s which, combined with the gold rush, lead to the establishment of shanty-towns.

“You get quite high rates of home ownership in relatively poor parts of Melbourne from quite an early age,” Professor Davison says.

Prior to South Australia’s introduction of universal manhood suffrage in 1856, landowning was a way to attain a vote in the political process. It was a line that continued, even after colonies ceased to apply to property qualifications for suffrage.

“Right into the end of the 19th century, you find people promoting home ownership saying, ‘It will make you a citizen in a fuller sense than if you didn’t own your own house.’”

Figures collected early in Professor Davison’s career suggest 44 per cent of Melburnians owned their own home in 1881, with similar rates in Sydney and Adelaide.

These are not figures matched anywhere else in the developed world at the time.

“Most other cities don’t get anywhere near it,” he says.

Grow your own

From the turn of the 20th century, Australian houses did something quite unusual: they fed the families who lived in them.

“The house wasn’t just a place to live [in Australia], but it was a place to grow your food,” Mr Cantrill says.

Other countries, he says, would place their farmland outside of town centres. Citizens would walk to the farmsteads, and vice versa.

But that’s not what happened in Australia.

“We had the agriculture and the house together, and this established … the so-called quarter-acre block,” Mr Cantrill says.

For Mr Cantrill, the effect his had on Australian cities cannot be overstated.

“This gives shape to cities which are extremely low density and occupy vast land,” he says.

These kind of cities were also formed by the availability of motor vehicles, cheap oil, and an expanding economy.

The dominance of the quarter-acre block led to the low density sprawl seen today: with double garages and media rooms taking the place of these early vegetable plots.

Postwar booms

During the Cold War, Australian governments looked to housing as a means of keeping communism at bay. “Citizens committed to mortgages,” ran one wartime advertisement, “tend not to be revolutionaries.”

The Menzies government tinkered with the housing mix.

“There was quite a move away from public housing,” Lionel Frost, an associate professor of economics at Monash Business School, says.

Menzies’ government created incentives for renters to purchase their houses, if they rented from the Public Housing Authority.

“It was a very much hands-off approach by the Commonwealth government at the time,” Associate Professor Frost says.

After World War II, waves of migrants came to Australia from England, Ireland and Europe. Greeks and Italians, in particular were keen to own their own homes.

“They have a very strong preference for having their own home, because it provided an opportunity not available in Britain or Europe,” Associate Professor Frost says.

By the mid 1970s Australian home ownership had reached something of a saturation point: 70 to 75 per cent.

Finance gets involved

The 80s was a time for structural changes around Australian homeowning. The finance industry was deregulated. Dual income households were the norm, making mortgages easier to attain. Rising interest rates were followed by dramatically tumbling interest rates.

“Changes in the availability and the cost of finance had really big implications for the housing market in particular,” Nicole Gurran, a professor of planning at the University of Sydney, says.

Prior to deregulation, the housing system was geared around owner-occupiers, and property investors loaning from the bank would incur a considerable rate penalty on their loans.

But the equalising of interest rates moved the goal posts of home ownership. Homes were increasingly purchased for their exchange value — used as leverage, as a vehicle for wealth accumulation.

“We certainly have seen an increase in people investing in housing, including their own housing, with a view to accumulating wealth,” Professor Gurran says.

“This certainly increased in the 1990s and the 2000s.”

By the early 1990s, Professor Gurran says, property prices rose faster than inflation, while interest rates decreased. With the proportion of public housing at a low, a strong private rental market was needed to do “the heavy lifting”.

“We start to see things like negative gearing,” she notes.

That made investment in the private rental market seem attractive for landlords — thus expanding the rental market, and their portfolios.

For Professor Davison, this was a seismic shift in conceptions of the Australian dream.

“In the 60s and 70s … home ownership was a democratic ideal,” he says.

“[But] increasingly, I think, people came to look at the house not just for its use value but — to use the Marxist jargon — its exchange value.”

Source: https://highpowerclean.com.au/australias-home-ownership-obsession-a-brief-history-of-how-it-came-to-be-abc-online/

from High Power Cleaning Melbourne https://highpowercleanau.wordpress.com/2017/08/23/australias-home-ownership-obsession-a-brief-history-of-how-it-came-to-be-abc-online/

[highpowercleanau]

Australia's home ownership obsession: A brief history of how it came to be – ABC Online

Over time, the Great Australian Dream has meant different things to different people.

But for the better part of a century, any reference to Australian aspirations — great or otherwise — meant buying a house.

A recent ANU poll found more than three quarters of Australians viewed home ownership as part of “the Australian way of life”.

Yet, for housing experts, this fixation on owning a home of your own is curiously specific at best, and harmful at worst.

“Do you need to own?” urban designer Peter John Cantrill asks, with the emphasis on “need”.

For Mr Cantrill, the operative question is: can you be secure where you live?

Countries such as Germany and Sweden have far lower rates of home ownership, he argues, offset by controlled rents or tenancy insurance.

Now, with many Australians facing mortgage stress or rental stress, the great Australian dream has become a nightmare. But is this a crisis of our own making?

For some 60,000 years, Australian land was occupied by Indigenous people. Many were displaced by white settlement.

New South Wales’ first Governor, Arthur Phillip, somewhat naively assumed the British government would own all the land in his newfound colony.

“But what happens very quickly is that people take land without permission,” Graeme Davison, professor of urban studies at Monash University, says.

It wasn’t all anarchy: freed convicts were granted land in the hope they wouldn’t return to England, and retiring officers were gifted land, as were free settlers.

And by the time Governor Ralph Darling arrived in 1825, a more orderly system was implemented.

“From about that point on you begin to get a more systematic freehold land system,” Professor Davison says.

“By the 1830s, owning your own piece of property was an attainable objective.”

One house, one vote

In English cities, land tenure laws and vast church-owned estates precluded many from ever owning their own plot. This was not the case in Sydney and Melbourne.

Melbourne in particular experienced quite rapid subdivision in the 1850s which, combined with the gold rush, lead to the establishment of shanty-towns.

“You get quite high rates of home ownership in relatively poor parts of Melbourne from quite an early age,” Professor Davison says.

Prior to South Australia’s introduction of universal manhood suffrage in 1856, landowning was a way to attain a vote in the political process. It was a line that continued, even after colonies ceased to apply to property qualifications for suffrage.

“Right into the end of the 19th century, you find people promoting home ownership saying, ‘It will make you a citizen in a fuller sense than if you didn’t own your own house.'”

Figures collected early in Professor Davison’s career suggest 44 per cent of Melburnians owned their own home in 1881, with similar rates in Sydney and Adelaide.

These are not figures matched anywhere else in the developed world at the time.

“Most other cities don’t get anywhere near it,” he says.

Grow your own

From the turn of the 20th century, Australian houses did something quite unusual: they fed the families who lived in them.

“The house wasn’t just a place to live [in Australia], but it was a place to grow your food,” Mr Cantrill says.

Other countries, he says, would place their farmland outside of town centres. Citizens would walk to the farmsteads, and vice versa.

But that’s not what happened in Australia.

“We had the agriculture and the house together, and this established … the so-called quarter-acre block,” Mr Cantrill says.

For Mr Cantrill, the effect his had on Australian cities cannot be overstated.

“This gives shape to cities which are extremely low density and occupy vast land,” he says.

These kind of cities were also formed by the availability of motor vehicles, cheap oil, and an expanding economy.

The dominance of the quarter-acre block led to the low density sprawl seen today: with double garages and media rooms taking the place of these early vegetable plots.

Postwar booms

During the Cold War, Australian governments looked to housing as a means of keeping communism at bay. “Citizens committed to mortgages,” ran one wartime advertisement, “tend not to be revolutionaries.”

The Menzies government tinkered with the housing mix.

“There was quite a move away from public housing,” Lionel Frost, an associate professor of economics at Monash Business School, says.

Menzies’ government created incentives for renters to purchase their houses, if they rented from the Public Housing Authority.

“It was a very much hands-off approach by the Commonwealth government at the time,” Associate Professor Frost says.

After World War II, waves of migrants came to Australia from England, Ireland and Europe. Greeks and Italians, in particular were keen to own their own homes.

“They have a very strong preference for having their own home, because it provided an opportunity not available in Britain or Europe,” Associate Professor Frost says.

By the mid 1970s Australian home ownership had reached something of a saturation point: 70 to 75 per cent.

Finance gets involved

The 80s was a time for structural changes around Australian homeowning. The finance industry was deregulated. Dual income households were the norm, making mortgages easier to attain. Rising interest rates were followed by dramatically tumbling interest rates.

“Changes in the availability and the cost of finance had really big implications for the housing market in particular,” Nicole Gurran, a professor of planning at the University of Sydney, says.

Prior to deregulation, the housing system was geared around owner-occupiers, and property investors loaning from the bank would incur a considerable rate penalty on their loans.

But the equalising of interest rates moved the goal posts of home ownership. Homes were increasingly purchased for their exchange value — used as leverage, as a vehicle for wealth accumulation.

“We certainly have seen an increase in people investing in housing, including their own housing, with a view to accumulating wealth,” Professor Gurran says.

“This certainly increased in the 1990s and the 2000s.”

By the early 1990s, Professor Gurran says, property prices rose faster than inflation, while interest rates decreased. With the proportion of public housing at a low, a strong private rental market was needed to do “the heavy lifting”.

“We start to see things like negative gearing,” she notes.

That made investment in the private rental market seem attractive for landlords — thus expanding the rental market, and their portfolios.

For Professor Davison, this was a seismic shift in conceptions of the Australian dream.

“In the 60s and 70s … home ownership was a democratic ideal,” he says.

“[But] increasingly, I think, people came to look at the house not just for its use value but — to use the Marxist jargon — its exchange value.”

from End of Lease Cleaning Melbourne|Bond back cleaning|Bond Cleaning |Vacate cleaning Melbourne https://highpowerclean.com.au/australias-home-ownership-obsession-a-brief-history-of-how-it-came-to-be-abc-online/

[nancydpolardau]

Housing affordability: 6000 homes removed from rental market as landlords turn to Airbnb – The Sydney Morning Herald

An estimated 6000 homes have potentially been obtained out of Sydney’s permanent rental housing market as landlords list properties on home-sharing internet sites such as Airbnb.

New data in the University of Sydney’s Urban Housing Lab implies that the home-sharing internet site could possibly be worsening housing price especially in Sydney’s inner coastal and city regions together with the NSW North Coast.

Airbnb landlord Lynne Segal reported that the home-sharing internet site aids her pay for to remain static in her Newtown terrace.   Image: Louise Kennerley

An analysis of land listings at April 20 17 found about 28 per cent of Airbnb listings ended up entire properties, while 70 per cent were rooms and shared rooms.

“This equates to around 6000 homes taken out of their lasting rental market place and 17,000 Sydney families using their homes, rooms or beds to get extra income,” said Professor Nicole Gurran.

“If you are a lady in your early 60s, your decisions have been substantially diminished with respect to the job marketplace”: Lynne Segal with fellow Airbnb landlord Mary Porter.   Image: Louise Kennerley

However, an Airbnb spokesman claimed Sydney’s costly housing pre-dates that the coming of the home-share site.

He claimed the  vast majority of all Airbnb hosts in Australia set their primary residence — that the dwelling they live in — to get a mean of thirty evenings each year.

“That’s perhaps not just a dwelling being taken off the marketplace,” he said.   “It is regular people with their home maybe if they’re on holidays or traveling to earn a modest extra money.”  

You will now get upgrades from AM & PM Update Publication

AM & PM Update Publication

Get the hottest news and updates emailed directly to your inbox.

Mature women confront limited Options

The spokesman mentioned Airbnb had been an “financial lifeline” for landlords such as Lynne Segal, that credits the home-sharing internet site with aiding her afford to remain static in her Newtown terrace.

Lynne Segal mentioned she’d not think Airbnb had worsened housing significance in town Sydney.   Image: Louise Kennerley

With a few career prospects as well as a minimal total of superannuation, Ms Segal mentioned her finances looked grim if she switched 60.

“If you are a lady in your early 60s, your decisions have been substantially diminished in terms of the work marketplace,” she said.

Ms Segal’s  principal strength is her property, de populated once her kids left home, which she’d remodeled to make a sitting room and bath to get temporary visitors.

An Airbnb landlord for three years, Ms Segal lists two rooms online on the home-sharing internet site for $70 and $80 per night.

Ms Segal explained she’d kept prices lower to pull longer-term tenants, and has been now hosting a English-language student from Italy for 5 weeks and a university scholar from Malaysia for three weeks.

Her only criticism was that the untidiness of some company.

“A PhD student came here to get a session by Denmark and the only problem I had along with him was he didn’t change his own sheets for 3 weeks,” he said. “I had to toss out them later.”

Ms Segal  explained that she�� didn’t want to get yourself a house-mate on a more lasting foundation: “I would not  earn too much cash.”

However she  mentioned she’d not believe   Airbnb  had worsened housing worth in the area.

Airbnb-type rentals additionally  stand accused of destroying neighbourhood amenity in parts of Sydney — most especially from the Bridgeport apartment complex at Macquarie road.

However, Ms Segal  claimed peace jumped from the trunk streets of Newtown, lined with century-old terraces.

“Half of my neighbours are doing this anyway,” she said. “Yeah, I mean perhaps not half but everyone’s extremely tolerant of this.”

Affect housing cost

Professor Gurran’s new study additionally discovered a cluster of Airbnb listings in tourist hot areas — Sydney’s inner coastal and city suburbs and the NSW North Coast — which she claimed may possibly have always served tourist accommodation.

“However, with the development of the web or internet-enabled, home-sharing platforms, so it is simpler for dwelling owners to set their dwelling since tourist accommodation,” she  said.   “It has got the potential to simply exacerbate the worth problem and furnish for tenants and customers alike.”

The brand new  study  a part of a continuing  review  roughly  Airbnb’s  impact on housing prices by the Urban Housing Lab.

Professor Gurran stated the number of listings around Airbnb for whole homes   was roughly five times the estimated quantity of leasing exemptions — that the percentage of empty lease stock that has been available for people to rent on a lasting foundation — at the Waverley local government place at April 20 17.

Airbnb listings of overall homes in Mosman, Woollahra and the City of Sydney, in addition to Byron Bay and Ballina shires, additionally significantly outstripped leasing deductions.

“The final results show that Airbnb listings have potential effect on rental housing markets at both Sydney and the Northern Rivers,  with homes less or more permanently available as tourist accommodation, accounting for at least 50 per cent of leasing vacancy rates from many localities,” she said.

However, Airbnb’s impact on housing price remains controversial.

Anthony Meaker, the head of company-owned residence management in McGrath, claimed: “We’ve observed some isolated episodes of high-value holiday properties going down the Airbnb path, chiefly in harbour side and beachside markets.   But, we are not seeing an exodus, just isolated cases.”

A   report,  printed at March 20 17,  by the Tenants Union of NSW suggested   Airbnb  had yet to generate an impact around the private rental industry: “It’s might be worth noting in passing that decrease income tenants in Sydney’s private economy have mostly already been transferred out from the regions in which  Airbnb is found.”

Airbnb’s spokesman mentioned the home-sharing website   was a tiny participant in the housing market place: “In Sydney, which gets got the listings of almost any city and double the variety of listings of Melbourne, our network still simply represents a small percentage — about 1 per cent — of the local market.

“To put that in perspective, you’ll find near to 10 times as lots of empty homes in Australia as you will find Airbnb listings,” he said.  

The NSW administration’s  Short-term Holiday Launched in NSW selections Paper,  published monthly, canvases potential regulatory changes to tackle concerns about the effects of Airbnb such as noise, waste, traffic and parking as well as housing value.

“At present, the principles for dwelling sharing at NSW aren’t fit   for  purpose, ”” Airbnb’s spokesman claimed.   “Right now, we’ve got an extremely puzzling and intricate patchwork of rules that were published prior to the world wide web even existed.”  

Adhere to Sydney Today

from End of Lease Cleaning Melbourne|Bond back cleaning|Bond Cleaning |Vacate cleaning Melbourne https://highpowerclean.com.au/housing-affordability-6000-homes-removed-from-rental-market-as-landlords-turn-to-airbnb-the-sydney-morning-herald/ from High Power Cleaning Melbourne https://highpowercleanau.tumblr.com/post/164405739441

[jerrymcguireau]

Housing affordability: 6000 homes removed from rental market as landlords turn to Airbnb The Sydney Morning Herald

An estimated 6000 homes have potentially been obtained out of Sydney’s permanent rental housing market as landlords list properties on home-sharing internet sites such as Airbnb.

New data in the University of Sydney’s Urban Housing Lab implies that the home-sharing internet site could possibly be worsening housing price especially in Sydney’s inner coastal and city regions together with the NSW North Coast.

Airbnb landlord Lynne Segal reported that the home-sharing internet site aids her pay for to remain static in her Newtown terrace.   Image: Louise Kennerley

An analysis of land listings at April 20 17 found about 28 per cent of Airbnb listings ended up entire properties, while 70 per cent were rooms and shared rooms.

“This equates to around 6000 homes taken out of their lasting rental market place and 17,000 Sydney families using their homes, rooms or beds to get extra income,” said Professor Nicole Gurran.

“If you are a lady in your early 60s, your decisions have been substantially diminished with respect to the job marketplace”: Lynne Segal with fellow Airbnb landlord Mary Porter.   Image: Louise Kennerley

However, an Airbnb spokesman claimed Sydney’s costly housing pre-dates that the coming of the home-share site.

He claimed the  vast majority of all Airbnb hosts in Australia set their primary residence — that the dwelling they live in — to get a mean of thirty evenings each year.

“That’s perhaps not just a dwelling being taken off the marketplace,” he said.   “It is regular people with their home maybe if they’re on holidays or traveling to earn a modest extra money.”  

You will now get upgrades from AM & PM Update Publication

AM & PM Update Publication

Get the hottest news and updates emailed directly to your inbox.

Mature women confront limited Options

The spokesman mentioned Airbnb had been an “financial lifeline” for landlords such as Lynne Segal, that credits the home-sharing internet site with aiding her afford to remain static in her Newtown terrace.

Lynne Segal mentioned she’d not think Airbnb had worsened housing significance in town Sydney.   Image: Louise Kennerley

With a few career prospects as well as a minimal total of superannuation, Ms Segal mentioned her finances looked grim if she switched 60.

“If you are a lady in your early 60s, your decisions have been substantially diminished in terms of the work marketplace,” she said.

Ms Segal’s  principal strength is her property, de populated once her kids left home, which she’d remodeled to make a sitting room and bath to get temporary visitors.

An Airbnb landlord for three years, Ms Segal lists two rooms online on the home-sharing internet site for $70 and $80 per night.

Ms Segal explained she’d kept prices lower to pull longer-term tenants, and has been now hosting a English-language student from Italy for 5 weeks and a university scholar from Malaysia for three weeks.

Her only criticism was that the untidiness of some company.

“A PhD student came here to get a session by Denmark and the only problem I had along with him was he didn’t change his own sheets for 3 weeks,” he said. “I had to toss out them later.”

Ms Segal  explained that she  didn’t want to get yourself a house-mate on a more lasting foundation: “I would not  earn too much cash.”

However she  mentioned she’d not believe   Airbnb  had worsened housing worth in the area.

Airbnb-type rentals additionally  stand accused of destroying neighbourhood amenity in parts of Sydney — most especially from the Bridgeport apartment complex at Macquarie road.

However, Ms Segal  claimed peace jumped from the trunk streets of Newtown, lined with century-old terraces.

“Half of my neighbours are doing this anyway,” she said. “Yeah, I mean perhaps not half but everyone’s extremely tolerant of this.”

Affect housing cost

Professor Gurran’s new study additionally discovered a cluster of Airbnb listings in tourist hot areas — Sydney’s inner coastal and city suburbs and the NSW North Coast — which she claimed may possibly have always served tourist accommodation.

“However, with the development of the web or internet-enabled, home-sharing platforms, so it is simpler for dwelling owners to set their dwelling since tourist accommodation,” she  said.   “It has got the potential to simply exacerbate the worth problem and furnish for tenants and customers alike.”

The brand new  study  a part of a continuing  review  roughly  Airbnb’s  impact on housing prices by the Urban Housing Lab.

Professor Gurran stated the number of listings around Airbnb for whole homes   was roughly five times the estimated quantity of leasing exemptions — that the percentage of empty lease stock that has been available for people to rent on a lasting foundation — at the Waverley local government place at April 20 17.

Airbnb listings of overall homes in Mosman, Woollahra and the City of Sydney, in addition to Byron Bay and Ballina shires, additionally significantly outstripped leasing deductions.

“The final results show that Airbnb listings have potential effect on rental housing markets at both Sydney and the Northern Rivers,  with homes less or more permanently available as tourist accommodation, accounting for at least 50 per cent of leasing vacancy rates from many localities,” she said.

However, Airbnb’s impact on housing price remains controversial.

Anthony Meaker, the head of company-owned residence management in McGrath, claimed: “We’ve observed some isolated episodes of high-value holiday properties going down the Airbnb path, chiefly in harbour side and beachside markets.   But, we are not seeing an exodus, just isolated cases.”

A   report,  printed at March 20 17,  by the Tenants Union of NSW suggested   Airbnb  had yet to generate an impact around the private rental industry: “It’s might be worth noting in passing that decrease income tenants in Sydney’s private economy have mostly already been transferred out from the regions in which  Airbnb is found.”

Airbnb’s spokesman mentioned the home-sharing website   was a tiny participant in the housing market place: “In Sydney, which gets got the listings of almost any city and double the variety of listings of Melbourne, our network still simply represents a small percentage — about 1 per cent — of the local market.

“To put that in perspective, you’ll find near to 10 times as lots of empty homes in Australia as you will find Airbnb listings,” he said.  

The NSW administration’s  Short-term Holiday Launched in NSW selections Paper,  published monthly, canvases potential regulatory changes to tackle concerns about the effects of Airbnb such as noise, waste, traffic and parking as well as housing value.

“At present, the principles for dwelling sharing at NSW aren’t fit   for  purpose, ”” Airbnb’s spokesman claimed.   “Right now, we’ve got an extremely puzzling and intricate patchwork of rules that were published prior to the world wide web even existed.”  

Adhere to Sydney Today

from https://highpowerclean.com.au/housing-affordability-6000-homes-removed-from-rental-market-as-landlords-turn-to-airbnb-the-sydney-morning-herald/

from High Power Cleaning Melbourne - Blog http://highpowercleanau.weebly.com/blog/housing-affordability-6000-homes-removed-from-rental-market-as-landlords-turn-to-airbnb-the-sydney-morning-herald

[jerrymcguireau]

Australia's home ownership obsession: A brief history of how it came to be ABC Online

Over time, the Great Australian Dream has meant different things to different people.

But for the better part of a century, any reference to Australian aspirations — great or otherwise — meant buying a house.

A recent ANU poll found more than three quarters of Australians viewed home ownership as part of “the Australian way of life”.

Yet, for housing experts, this fixation on owning a home of your own is curiously specific at best, and harmful at worst.

“Do you need to own?” urban designer Peter John Cantrill asks, with the emphasis on “need”.

For Mr Cantrill, the operative question is: can you be secure where you live?

Countries such as Germany and Sweden have far lower rates of home ownership, he argues, offset by controlled rents or tenancy insurance.

Now, with many Australians facing mortgage stress or rental stress, the great Australian dream has become a nightmare. But is this a crisis of our own making?

For some 60,000 years, Australian land was occupied by Indigenous people. Many were displaced by white settlement.

New South Wales’ first Governor, Arthur Phillip, somewhat naively assumed the British government would own all the land in his newfound colony.

“But what happens very quickly is that people take land without permission,” Graeme Davison, professor of urban studies at Monash University, says.

It wasn’t all anarchy: freed convicts were granted land in the hope they wouldn’t return to England, and retiring officers were gifted land, as were free settlers.

And by the time Governor Ralph Darling arrived in 1825, a more orderly system was implemented.

“From about that point on you begin to get a more systematic freehold land system,” Professor Davison says.

“By the 1830s, owning your own piece of property was an attainable objective.”

One house, one vote

In English cities, land tenure laws and vast church-owned estates precluded many from ever owning their own plot. This was not the case in Sydney and Melbourne.

Melbourne in particular experienced quite rapid subdivision in the 1850s which, combined with the gold rush, lead to the establishment of shanty-towns.

“You get quite high rates of home ownership in relatively poor parts of Melbourne from quite an early age,” Professor Davison says.

Prior to South Australia’s introduction of universal manhood suffrage in 1856, landowning was a way to attain a vote in the political process. It was a line that continued, even after colonies ceased to apply to property qualifications for suffrage.

“Right into the end of the 19th century, you find people promoting home ownership saying, ‘It will make you a citizen in a fuller sense than if you didn’t own your own house.'”

Figures collected early in Professor Davison’s career suggest 44 per cent of Melburnians owned their own home in 1881, with similar rates in Sydney and Adelaide.

These are not figures matched anywhere else in the developed world at the time.

“Most other cities don’t get anywhere near it,” he says.

Grow your own

From the turn of the 20th century, Australian houses did something quite unusual: they fed the families who lived in them.

“The house wasn’t just a place to live [in Australia], but it was a place to grow your food,” Mr Cantrill says.

Other countries, he says, would place their farmland outside of town centres. Citizens would walk to the farmsteads, and vice versa.

But that’s not what happened in Australia.

“We had the agriculture and the house together, and this established … the so-called quarter-acre block,” Mr Cantrill says.

For Mr Cantrill, the effect his had on Australian cities cannot be overstated.

“This gives shape to cities which are extremely low density and occupy vast land,” he says.

These kind of cities were also formed by the availability of motor vehicles, cheap oil, and an expanding economy.

The dominance of the quarter-acre block led to the low density sprawl seen today: with double garages and media rooms taking the place of these early vegetable plots.

Postwar booms

During the Cold War, Australian governments looked to housing as a means of keeping communism at bay. “Citizens committed to mortgages,” ran one wartime advertisement, “tend not to be revolutionaries.”

The Menzies government tinkered with the housing mix.

“There was quite a move away from public housing,” Lionel Frost, an associate professor of economics at Monash Business School, says.

Menzies’ government created incentives for renters to purchase their houses, if they rented from the Public Housing Authority.

“It was a very much hands-off approach by the Commonwealth government at the time,” Associate Professor Frost says.

After World War II, waves of migrants came to Australia from England, Ireland and Europe. Greeks and Italians, in particular were keen to own their own homes.

“They have a very strong preference for having their own home, because it provided an opportunity not available in Britain or Europe,” Associate Professor Frost says.

By the mid 1970s Australian home ownership had reached something of a saturation point: 70 to 75 per cent.

Finance gets involved

The 80s was a time for structural changes around Australian homeowning. The finance industry was deregulated. Dual income households were the norm, making mortgages easier to attain. Rising interest rates were followed by dramatically tumbling interest rates.

“Changes in the availability and the cost of finance had really big implications for the housing market in particular,” Nicole Gurran, a professor of planning at the University of Sydney, says.

Prior to deregulation, the housing system was geared around owner-occupiers, and property investors loaning from the bank would incur a considerable rate penalty on their loans.

But the equalising of interest rates moved the goal posts of home ownership. Homes were increasingly purchased for their exchange value — used as leverage, as a vehicle for wealth accumulation.

“We certainly have seen an increase in people investing in housing, including their own housing, with a view to accumulating wealth,” Professor Gurran says.

“This certainly increased in the 1990s and the 2000s.”

By the early 1990s, Professor Gurran says, property prices rose faster than inflation, while interest rates decreased. With the proportion of public housing at a low, a strong private rental market was needed to do “the heavy lifting”.

“We start to see things like negative gearing,” she notes.

That made investment in the private rental market seem attractive for landlords — thus expanding the rental market, and their portfolios.

For Professor Davison, this was a seismic shift in conceptions of the Australian dream.

“In the 60s and 70s … home ownership was a democratic ideal,” he says.

“[But] increasingly, I think, people came to look at the house not just for its use value but — to use the Marxist jargon — its exchange value.”

from https://highpowerclean.com.au/australias-home-ownership-obsession-a-brief-history-of-how-it-came-to-be-abc-online/

from High Power Cleaning Melbourne - Blog http://highpowercleanau.weebly.com/blog/australias-home-ownership-obsession-a-brief-history-of-how-it-came-to-be-abc-online

[nancydpolardau]

Australia's home ownership obsession: A brief history of how it came to be – ABC Online

Over time, the Great Australian Dream has meant different things to different people.

But for the better part of a century, any reference to Australian aspirations — great or otherwise — meant buying a house.

A recent ANU poll found more than three quarters of Australians viewed home ownership as part of “the Australian way of life”.

Yet, for housing experts, this fixation on owning a home of your own is curiously specific at best, and harmful at worst.

“Do you need to own?” urban designer Peter John Cantrill asks, with the emphasis on “need”.

For Mr Cantrill, the operative question is: can you be secure where you live?

Countries such as Germany and Sweden have far lower rates of home ownership, he argues, offset by controlled rents or tenancy insurance.

Now, with many Australians facing mortgage stress or rental stress, the great Australian dream has become a nightmare. But is this a crisis of our own making?

For some 60,000 years, Australian land was occupied by Indigenous people. Many were displaced by white settlement.

New South Wales’ first Governor, Arthur Phillip, somewhat naively assumed the British government would own all the land in his newfound colony.

“But what happens very quickly is that people take land without permission,” Graeme Davison, professor of urban studies at Monash University, says.

It wasn’t all anarchy: freed convicts were granted land in the hope they wouldn’t return to England, and retiring officers were gifted land, as were free settlers.

And by the time Governor Ralph Darling arrived in 1825, a more orderly system was implemented.

“From about that point on you begin to get a more systematic freehold land system,” Professor Davison says.

“By the 1830s, owning your own piece of property was an attainable objective.”

One house, one vote

In English cities, land tenure laws and vast church-owned estates precluded many from ever owning their own plot. This was not the case in Sydney and Melbourne.

Melbourne in particular experienced quite rapid subdivision in the 1850s which, combined with the gold rush, lead to the establishment of shanty-towns.

“You get quite high rates of home ownership in relatively poor parts of Melbourne from quite an early age,” Professor Davison says.

Prior to South Australia’s introduction of universal manhood suffrage in 1856, landowning was a way to attain a vote in the political process. It was a line that continued, even after colonies ceased to apply to property qualifications for suffrage.

“Right into the end of the 19th century, you find people promoting home ownership saying, ‘It will make you a citizen in a fuller sense than if you didn’t own your own house.‘”

Figures collected early in Professor Davison’s career suggest 44 per cent of Melburnians owned their own home in 1881, with similar rates in Sydney and Adelaide.

These are not figures matched anywhere else in the developed world at the time.

“Most other cities don’t get anywhere near it,” he says.

Grow your own

From the turn of the 20th century, Australian houses did something quite unusual: they fed the families who lived in them.

“The house wasn’t just a place to live [in Australia], but it was a place to grow your food,” Mr Cantrill says.

Other countries, he says, would place their farmland outside of town centres. Citizens would walk to the farmsteads, and vice versa.

But that’s not what happened in Australia.

“We had the agriculture and the house together, and this established … the so-called quarter-acre block,” Mr Cantrill says.

For Mr Cantrill, the effect his had on Australian cities cannot be overstated.

“This gives shape to cities which are extremely low density and occupy vast land,” he says.

These kind of cities were also formed by the availability of motor vehicles, cheap oil, and an expanding economy.

The dominance of the quarter-acre block led to the low density sprawl seen today: with double garages and media rooms taking the place of these early vegetable plots.

Postwar booms

During the Cold War, Australian governments looked to housing as a means of keeping communism at bay. “Citizens committed to mortgages,” ran one wartime advertisement, “tend not to be revolutionaries.”

The Menzies government tinkered with the housing mix.

“There was quite a move away from public housing,” Lionel Frost, an associate professor of economics at Monash Business School, says.

Menzies’ government created incentives for renters to purchase their houses, if they rented from the Public Housing Authority.

“It was a very much hands-off approach by the Commonwealth government at the time,” Associate Professor Frost says.

After World War II, waves of migrants came to Australia from England, Ireland and Europe. Greeks and Italians, in particular were keen to own their own homes.

“They have a very strong preference for having their own home, because it provided an opportunity not available in Britain or Europe,” Associate Professor Frost says.

By the mid 1970s Australian home ownership had reached something of a saturation point: 70 to 75 per cent.

Finance gets involved

The 80s was a time for structural changes around Australian homeowning. The finance industry was deregulated. Dual income households were the norm, making mortgages easier to attain. Rising interest rates were followed by dramatically tumbling interest rates.

“Changes in the availability and the cost of finance had really big implications for the housing market in particular,” Nicole Gurran, a professor of planning at the University of Sydney, says.

Prior to deregulation, the housing system was geared around owner-occupiers, and property investors loaning from the bank would incur a considerable rate penalty on their loans.

But the equalising of interest rates moved the goal posts of home ownership. Homes were increasingly purchased for their exchange value — used as leverage, as a vehicle for wealth accumulation.

“We certainly have seen an increase in people investing in housing, including their own housing, with a view to accumulating wealth,” Professor Gurran says.

“This certainly increased in the 1990s and the 2000s.”

By the early 1990s, Professor Gurran says, property prices rose faster than inflation, while interest rates decreased. With the proportion of public housing at a low, a strong private rental market was needed to do “the heavy lifting”.

“We start to see things like negative gearing,” she notes.

That made investment in the private rental market seem attractive for landlords — thus expanding the rental market, and their portfolios.

For Professor Davison, this was a seismic shift in conceptions of the Australian dream.

“In the 60s and 70s … home ownership was a democratic ideal,” he says.

“[But] increasingly, I think, people came to look at the house not just for its use value but — to use the Marxist jargon — its exchange value.”

from End of Lease Cleaning Melbourne|Bond back cleaning|Bond Cleaning |Vacate cleaning Melbourne https://highpowerclean.com.au/australias-home-ownership-obsession-a-brief-history-of-how-it-came-to-be-abc-online/ from High Power Cleaning Melbourne https://highpowercleanau.tumblr.com/post/164529481036

[jerrymcguireau]

Housing affordability: Is Airbnb to blame? Daily Advertiser

Airbnb landlord Lynne Segal said the home-sharing website helps her afford to stay in her Newtown terrace. Photo: Louise Kennerley

An estimated 6000 homes have potentially been taken out of Sydney’s permanent rental housing market as landlords list properties on home-sharing websites such as Airbnb.

New data from the University of Sydney’s Urban Housing Lab suggests the home-sharing website may be worsening housing affordability particularly in Sydney’s inner city and coastal suburbs as well as the NSW North Coast.

An analysis of property listings in April 2017 found about 28 per cent of Airbnb listings were entire properties, while 70 per cent were rooms and shared rooms.

“This equates to around 6000 homes taken out of the permanent rental market and 17,000 Sydney households using their homes, rooms or beds for extra income,” said Professor Nicole Gurran.

However, an Airbnb spokesman said Sydney’s expensive housing pre-dates the arrival of the home-share website.

He said the majority of Airbnb hosts in Australia list their primary residence – the home they live in – for an average of 30 nights per year.

“That’s not a home being taken off the market,” he said. “It is everyday people using their home maybe when they are on holidays or travelling to make a little extra money.”

Older women face limited choices

The spokesman said Airbnb was an “economic lifeline” for landlords such as Lynne Segal, who credits the home-sharing website with helping her afford to stay in her Newtown terrace.

With few job prospects and a low amount of superannuation, Ms Segal said her finances looked grim when she turned 60.

“When you’re a woman in your early 60s, your choices are greatly diminished in terms of the job market,” she said.

Ms Segal’s principal asset is her house, depopulated after her children left home, which she had renovated to create a sitting room and bathroom for short-term guests.

An Airbnb landlord for three years, Ms Segal lists two rooms on the home-sharing website for $70 and $80 a night.

Ms Segal said she had kept prices low to attract longer-term tenants, and was currently hosting an English-language student from Italy for five months and a university student from Malaysia for three months.

Her only complaint was the untidiness of some guests.

“A PhD student came here for a semester from Denmark and the only problem I had with him was he did not change his sheets for three months,” she said. “I had to throw them out afterwards.”

Ms Segal said she did not want to get a housemate on a more permanent basis: “I wouldn’t make as much money.”

But she said she did not believe Airbnb had worsened housing affordability in the area.

Airbnb-type rentals also stand accused of ruining neighbourhood amenity in parts of Sydney – most notably in the Bridgeport apartment complex in Macquarie Street.

But Ms Segal said peace reigned in the back streets of Newtown, lined with century-old terraces.

“Half of my neighbours are doing it anyway,” she said. “Yeah, I mean not half but everyone’s very tolerant of it.”

Impact on housing affordability

Professor Gurran’s new research also found a cluster of Airbnb listings in tourist hot spots – Sydney’s inner city and coastal suburbs as well as the NSW North Coast – which she said may have always offered tourist accommodation.

“However, with the emergence of the online or internet-enabled, home-sharing platforms, it is easier for home owners to list their home as tourist accommodation,” she said. “This has the potential to only exacerbate the affordability problem and supply for renters and buyers alike.”

The new research is part of an ongoing study about Airbnb’s impact on housing affordability by the Urban Housing Lab.

Professor Gurran said the number of listings on Airbnb for entire homes was about five times the estimated number of rental vacancies – the proportion of vacant rental stock that was available for people to rent on a permanent basis – in the Waverley local government area in April 2017.

Airbnb listings of entire homes in Mosman, Woollahra and the City of Sydney, as well as Byron Bay and Ballina shires, also significantly outstripped rental vacancies.

“The results show that Airbnb listings have potential impact on rental housing markets in both Sydney and the Northern Rivers, with homes more or less permanently available as tourist accommodation, accounting for more than 50 per cent of rental vacancy rates in most localities,” she said.

But Airbnb’s impact on housing affordability remains contentious.

Anthony Meaker, the head of company-owned property management at McGrath, said: “We have seen some isolated incidents of high-value holiday properties going down the Airbnb route, predominantly in harbourside and beachside markets. However, we are not seeing an exodus, just isolated cases.”

A report, published in March 2017, by the Tenants Union of NSW suggested Airbnb had yet to make an impact on the private rental market: “It is worth noting in passing that lower income renters in Sydney’s private market have mostly already been moved out of the areas where Airbnb is located.”

Airbnb’s spokesman said the home-sharing website was a small player in the housing market: “In Sydney, which has the most listings of any Australian city and double the number of listings of Melbourne, our community still only represents a tiny fraction – around 1 per cent – of the local market.

“To put that in perspective, there are close to 10 times as many empty homes in Australia as there are Airbnb listings,” he said.

The NSW government’s Short-term Holiday Letting in NSW Options Paper, released last month, canvases potential regulatory changes to address concerns about the impact of Airbnb such as noise, waste, traffic and parking as well as housing affordability.

“At present, the rules for home sharing in NSW aren’t fit for purpose,” Airbnb’s spokesman said. “Right now, we have a confusing and complex patchwork of rules that were written well before the internet even existed.”

The story Housing affordability: Is Airbnb to blame? first appeared on The Sydney Morning Herald.

from https://highpowerclean.com.au/housing-affordability-is-airbnb-to-blame-daily-advertiser/

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Housing affordability: Is Airbnb to blame? – Daily Advertiser

Airbnb landlord Lynne Segal said the home-sharing website helps her afford to stay in her Newtown terrace. Photo: Louise Kennerley

An estimated 6000 homes have potentially been taken out of Sydney’s permanent rental housing market as landlords list properties on home-sharing websites such as Airbnb.

New data from the University of Sydney’s Urban Housing Lab suggests the home-sharing website may be worsening housing affordability particularly in Sydney’s inner city and coastal suburbs as well as the NSW North Coast.

An analysis of property listings in April 2017 found about 28 per cent of Airbnb listings were entire properties, while 70 per cent were rooms and shared rooms.

“This equates to around 6000 homes taken out of the permanent rental market and 17,000 Sydney households using their homes, rooms or beds for extra income,” said Professor Nicole Gurran.

However, an Airbnb spokesman said Sydney’s expensive housing pre-dates the arrival of the home-share website.

He said the majority of Airbnb hosts in Australia list their primary residence – the home they live in – for an average of 30 nights per year.

“That’s not a home being taken off the market,” he said. “It is everyday people using their home maybe when they are on holidays or travelling to make a little extra money.”

Older women face limited choices

The spokesman said Airbnb was an “economic lifeline” for landlords such as Lynne Segal, who credits the home-sharing website with helping her afford to stay in her Newtown terrace.

With few job prospects and a low amount of superannuation, Ms Segal said her finances looked grim when she turned 60.

“When you’re a woman in your early 60s, your choices are greatly diminished in terms of the job market,” she said.

Ms Segal’s principal asset is her house, depopulated after her children left home, which she had renovated to create a sitting room and bathroom for short-term guests.

An Airbnb landlord for three years, Ms Segal lists two rooms on the home-sharing website for $70 and $80 a night.

Ms Segal said she had kept prices low to attract longer-term tenants, and was currently hosting an English-language student from Italy for five months and a university student from Malaysia for three months.

Her only complaint was the untidiness of some guests.

“A PhD student came here for a semester from Denmark and the only problem I had with him was he did not change his sheets for three months,” she said. “I had to throw them out afterwards.”

Ms Segal said she did not want to get a housemate on a more permanent basis: “I wouldn’t make as much money.”

But she said she did not believe Airbnb had worsened housing affordability in the area.

Airbnb-type rentals also stand accused of ruining neighbourhood amenity in parts of Sydney – most notably in the Bridgeport apartment complex in Macquarie Street.

But Ms Segal said peace reigned in the back streets of Newtown, lined with century-old terraces.

“Half of my neighbours are doing it anyway,” she said. “Yeah, I mean not half but everyone’s very tolerant of it.”

Impact on housing affordability

Professor Gurran’s new research also found a cluster of Airbnb listings in tourist hot spots – Sydney’s inner city and coastal suburbs as well as the NSW North Coast – which she said may have always offered tourist accommodation.

“However, with the emergence of the online or internet-enabled, home-sharing platforms, it is easier for home owners to list their home as tourist accommodation,” she said. “This has the potential to only exacerbate the affordability problem and supply for renters and buyers alike.”

The new research is part of an ongoing study about Airbnb’s impact on housing affordability by the Urban Housing Lab.

Professor Gurran said the number of listings on Airbnb for entire homes was about five times the estimated number of rental vacancies – the proportion of vacant rental stock that was available for people to rent on a permanent basis – in the Waverley local government area in April 2017.

Airbnb listings of entire homes in Mosman, Woollahra and the City of Sydney, as well as Byron Bay and Ballina shires, also significantly outstripped rental vacancies.

“The results show that Airbnb listings have potential impact on rental housing markets in both Sydney and the Northern Rivers, with homes more or less permanently available as tourist accommodation, accounting for more than 50 per cent of rental vacancy rates in most localities,” she said.

But Airbnb’s impact on housing affordability remains contentious.

Anthony Meaker, the head of company-owned property management at McGrath, said: “We have seen some isolated incidents of high-value holiday properties going down the Airbnb route, predominantly in harbourside and beachside markets. However, we are not seeing an exodus, just isolated cases.”

A report, published in March 2017, by the Tenants Union of NSW suggested Airbnb had yet to make an impact on the private rental market: “It is worth noting in passing that lower income renters in Sydney’s private market have mostly already been moved out of the areas where Airbnb is located.”

Airbnb’s spokesman said the home-sharing website was a small player in the housing market: “In Sydney, which has the most listings of any Australian city and double the number of listings of Melbourne, our community still only represents a tiny fraction – around 1 per cent – of the local market.

“To put that in perspective, there are close to 10 times as many empty homes in Australia as there are Airbnb listings,” he said.

The NSW government’s Short-term Holiday Letting in NSW Options Paper, released last month, canvases potential regulatory changes to address concerns about the impact of Airbnb such as noise, waste, traffic and parking as well as housing affordability.

“At present, the rules for home sharing in NSW aren’t fit for purpose,” Airbnb’s spokesman said. “Right now, we have a confusing and complex patchwork of rules that were written well before the internet even existed.”

The story Housing affordability: Is Airbnb to blame? first appeared on The Sydney Morning Herald.

from End of Lease Cleaning Melbourne|Bond back cleaning|Bond Cleaning |Vacate cleaning Melbourne https://highpowerclean.com.au/housing-affordability-is-airbnb-to-blame-daily-advertiser/ from High Power Cleaning Melbourne https://highpowercleanau.tumblr.com/post/164440445926

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Housing affordability: Is Airbnb to blame? – Daily Advertiser

Airbnb landlord Lynne Segal said the home-sharing website helps her afford to stay in her Newtown terrace. Photo: Louise Kennerley

An estimated 6000 homes have potentially been taken out of Sydney’s permanent rental housing market as landlords list properties on home-sharing websites such as Airbnb.

New data from the University of Sydney’s Urban Housing Lab suggests the home-sharing website may be worsening housing affordability particularly in Sydney’s inner city and coastal suburbs as well as the NSW North Coast.

An analysis of property listings in April 2017 found about 28 per cent of Airbnb listings were entire properties, while 70 per cent were rooms and shared rooms.

“This equates to around 6000 homes taken out of the permanent rental market and 17,000 Sydney households using their homes, rooms or beds for extra income,” said Professor Nicole Gurran.

However, an Airbnb spokesman said Sydney’s expensive housing pre-dates the arrival of the home-share website.

He said the majority of Airbnb hosts in Australia list their primary residence – the home they live in – for an average of 30 nights per year.

“That’s not a home being taken off the market,” he said. “It is everyday people using their home maybe when they are on holidays or travelling to make a little extra money.”

Older women face limited choices

The spokesman said Airbnb was an “economic lifeline” for landlords such as Lynne Segal, who credits the home-sharing website with helping her afford to stay in her Newtown terrace.

With few job prospects and a low amount of superannuation, Ms Segal said her finances looked grim when she turned 60.

“When you’re a woman in your early 60s, your choices are greatly diminished in terms of the job market,” she said.

Ms Segal’s principal asset is her house, depopulated after her children left home, which she had renovated to create a sitting room and bathroom for short-term guests.

An Airbnb landlord for three years, Ms Segal lists two rooms on the home-sharing website for $70 and $80 a night.

Ms Segal said she had kept prices low to attract longer-term tenants, and was currently hosting an English-language student from Italy for five months and a university student from Malaysia for three months.

Her only complaint was the untidiness of some guests.

“A PhD student came here for a semester from Denmark and the only problem I had with him was he did not change his sheets for three months,” she said. “I had to throw them out afterwards.”

Ms Segal said she did not want to get a housemate on a more permanent basis: “I wouldn’t make as much money.”

But she said she did not believe Airbnb had worsened housing affordability in the area.

Airbnb-type rentals also stand accused of ruining neighbourhood amenity in parts of Sydney – most notably in the Bridgeport apartment complex in Macquarie Street.

But Ms Segal said peace reigned in the back streets of Newtown, lined with century-old terraces.

“Half of my neighbours are doing it anyway,” she said. “Yeah, I mean not half but everyone’s very tolerant of it.”

Impact on housing affordability

Professor Gurran’s new research also found a cluster of Airbnb listings in tourist hot spots – Sydney’s inner city and coastal suburbs as well as the NSW North Coast – which she said may have always offered tourist accommodation.

“However, with the emergence of the online or internet-enabled, home-sharing platforms, it is easier for home owners to list their home as tourist accommodation,” she said. “This has the potential to only exacerbate the affordability problem and supply for renters and buyers alike.”

The new research is part of an ongoing study about Airbnb’s impact on housing affordability by the Urban Housing Lab.

Professor Gurran said the number of listings on Airbnb for entire homes was about five times the estimated number of rental vacancies – the proportion of vacant rental stock that was available for people to rent on a permanent basis – in the Waverley local government area in April 2017.

Airbnb listings of entire homes in Mosman, Woollahra and the City of Sydney, as well as Byron Bay and Ballina shires, also significantly outstripped rental vacancies.

“The results show that Airbnb listings have potential impact on rental housing markets in both Sydney and the Northern Rivers, with homes more or less permanently available as tourist accommodation, accounting for more than 50 per cent of rental vacancy rates in most localities,” she said.

But Airbnb’s impact on housing affordability remains contentious.

Anthony Meaker, the head of company-owned property management at McGrath, said: “We have seen some isolated incidents of high-value holiday properties going down the Airbnb route, predominantly in harbourside and beachside markets. However, we are not seeing an exodus, just isolated cases.”

A report, published in March 2017, by the Tenants Union of NSW suggested Airbnb had yet to make an impact on the private rental market: “It is worth noting in passing that lower income renters in Sydney’s private market have mostly already been moved out of the areas where Airbnb is located.”

Airbnb’s spokesman said the home-sharing website was a small player in the housing market: “In Sydney, which has the most listings of any Australian city and double the number of listings of Melbourne, our community still only represents a tiny fraction – around 1 per cent – of the local market.

“To put that in perspective, there are close to 10 times as many empty homes in Australia as there are Airbnb listings,” he said.

The NSW government’s Short-term Holiday Letting in NSW Options Paper, released last month, canvases potential regulatory changes to address concerns about the impact of Airbnb such as noise, waste, traffic and parking as well as housing affordability.

“At present, the rules for home sharing in NSW aren’t fit for purpose,” Airbnb’s spokesman said. “Right now, we have a confusing and complex patchwork of rules that were written well before the internet even existed.”

The story Housing affordability: Is Airbnb to blame? first appeared on The Sydney Morning Herald.

Source: https://highpowerclean.com.au/housing-affordability-is-airbnb-to-blame-daily-advertiser/

from High Power Cleaning Melbourne https://highpowercleanau.wordpress.com/2017/08/21/housing-affordability-is-airbnb-to-blame-daily-advertiser/