Prosper Australia

Access → Opportunity → Prosperity

Prosper Australia Press Release:

House prices stagnant

1 August 2012

The ABS Eight Capital Cities House Price Indexes 6416.0 released today shows the property market is totally stagnant with prices unmoved, says Prosper Australia.

“Property spruikers calling ‘Bottom!’ based on this data – and they will be – are misleading homebuyers. Sadly, they have come to believe their own one-sided narrative,” David Collyer Campaign Manager for Prosper Australia said today.

The +0.5 per cent nominal increase turns into a -0.01 per cent decrease after adjusting for inflation.

This is despite cumulative interest rate cuts of 1.25 per cent over the last year which ought to have made property significantly more attractive.

“The opportunity costs of holding property at the moment are very high, compared to the riskless Commonwealth bond rate.”

Meanwhile, sales volumes continue to fall, the stock of unsold properties continues to rise, building approvals are very weak and housing finance is bumping along at 35 year lows.

For Australia’s 1.1 million negative gearers, this is yet another three months lost subsidising renters, while holding costs continue to drain their cash flow.

“We repeat our warning to potential homebuyers to stay out of this market ahead of expected price falls.”

Don’t Buy Now!

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Media contact: David Collyer 0413 248 193

About Prosper: Prosper Australia is a tax reform lobby group and think tank that is now 120 years old. It seeks to move the base of government revenues from taxing individuals and enterprise to capturing the economic rents of the natural endowment, notably through Land Value Tax and Mining Tax.

PROPERTY INDUSTRY CONFIDENCE FALLS

Not that under the Howard, Rudd and Gillard governments we’ve had the greatest property bubble in our history and it’s now bursting maybe, guys?

A thoughtful little video showing how a land rent could resurrect South African employment and productivity.

It was economist/journalist Fred Harrison’s The Power in the Land: Unemployment, the Profits Crisis and the Land Speculator in 1983 that inspired me to take up research into the quantum of Australian real estate sales.

Harrison was one of the few people who called the world financial collapse–virtually to the day–from a long way out, demonstrating the manner in which the taxation of labour and capital, coupled with rent-seeking in land had generated the collapse.  He warned Gordon Brown on Brown’s infamous statement “No return to boom and bust” and subsequently exposed Brown’s complete failure as Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister.

If Europe’s political leaders wish to stop making themselves the banks’ fools,  they could do no better than read Harrison on how the banks are STILL ripping the people of Europe off.

Here’s a frank admission of how he does it from Australian billionaire Harry Triguboff  – he leeches off us.

A year on, this Michael Hudson video remains the best I’ve seen in summarizing the current state of western economies.

Although Hudson puts it in an amusing way, it’s no joke – it’s REAL, folks!

QUESTIONS ARISING

Is the parasitical 0.1% deliberately engineering this depression–its so-called form of “creative destruction”–because it no longer has the ability to repay its debts?

Was Alan Greenspan correct: “Household debt has created wage stability.” Is this why average real wages declined over the last 40 years and we still haven’t realised it? Many people believe average real wages HAVE risen. [Check out the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, because you can’t even get this data from the ABS!]

Have we morphed from constructive industrial capitalism into a fatal form of finance capitalism?

Is the parasites’ claim correct that further reducing wages is the ANSWER?  [They know it’s NOT!]

Will people allow the parasites to continue sucking them dry? [Apparently so!]

Quick on the heels of South Australia, we now have the Western Australia real estate sales data for the financial year ending 30 June 2012.

So, here’s the chart of the West’s volume of sales during the period of the Australian real estate bubble.

Although it can’t seem to make up its mind, the downward trend of total property sales in Western Australia is clearly observable.

Acknowledgement: http://www.freeworldmaps.net/australia/westernaustralia/map.html

HOORAY!

Congratulations to the public transport experts at Curtin and RMIT universities, and ARUP engineering for reminding us in their joint proposed rail link to Doncaster report that there are far better ways than PPPs to fund public infrastructure!

Are we at a watershed?  Is this the start of a public fight-back against rent-seeking PPPs?

Governments take heed!