Hoarding a scarce, essential resource to make money is villain shit, yes. Get a real job, Margaret.
That said, the real villains are politicians for not outlawing housing investment. Privileged opportunists will do it until it's illegal.
this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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That said, the real villains are politicians for not outlawing housing investment
Why would they implement something people don't want?
Bill Shorten went to the election with attempts to bring house prices down and lost an unlosable election
The liberal party have offered nothing to reduce house prices and they're in the lead to win the next election
Yeah, that's right. I remember that campaign. A raft of actual progressive policies to address some of Australia's most pressing concerns... and it lost. It was a real turning point.
Houses are most people's primary investment. You can argue about whether or not that ought to be the case but it is the case and can't be readily undone.
While it's still getting harder to purchase your first house, everyone who already has a house has an interest in preserving house prices. I don't have the numbers to hand, but something like 60% of voting Australians live in a home they own, but fewer 20 to 30 year olds own homes than at any time in the last 50 years.
... that's a complicated way of saying things are harder than ever for first home owners but there's still no political support to address the core problems.
Yes and fuck them. I'm keen on a one br / studio to live in. Airbnb investors have snatched them up at above market rate because they can neg gear the loan while taking in fat Airbnb cash renting it.
but are they the real villains?
Yes.
Thousands of words of waffle to try to be apologists for those poor unfairly maligned property investors who were just doing their best when they took advantage of circumstances and taxation benefits to snap up the available supply of a limited resource.
Do they realise that enabling this class of people to do these things without the threat of social consequence is at least in part how this gets normalised.
Not only that but it skews society. My sister owns two properties thanks to an interstate move for work requiring her to spend more than a decade away from the first home unit she purchased. That first unit was on the rental market for a little under a year while my Mum saw out the lease at her rental she then moved into my sisters and is maintaining the unit as though it was her own. She pays the mortgage, pays for maintenance, rates etc. My sister calls the aggregate of these payments rent (I imagine she derives some tax benefits from this but I don't imagine it's super significant and she does pay for things like strata fees herself). Every time she talks to her bank she gets harassed about not deriving enough income from this property asset and that she won't be eligible for more money until she raises the "rent" my mother pays... By a lot. She is currently looking to sell the 2nd house she bought to put the money towards the next interstate purchase for the new requirements of her job and is being told the bank won't extend her a loan until the rent on the unit is increased to a "reasonable" amount.
Our system is broken, badly, and the only corrections I can see that would reintroduce equity will destroy the people who have invested into the property ponzi scheme. Find me a government who would bankrupt a large portion of the population, including themselves, for a better future. I'll arrange an airborne porcine squadron to replace the Roulettes for the next ANZAC day to celebrate.
Yes. Next question.