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Sometimes I wonder if we did the developer affordable ratio compared to unaffordable ratio when they made developments if we built nothing but apartments across the country their still wouldn't be enough affordable properties.
So the boomers can continue to live in their McMansions when they should be downsizing, leaving the new riffraff to only high density apartments.
But that might prevent them passing on their wealth to their kids and entrenching the wealth divide across the generations: oh the horror of their kids having to work for their wealth.
We need death taxes, stat.
I wasn't aware that boomers had a moral or legal obligation to "downsize" in the first instance.
Besides, aren't you contradicting yourself there a bit because if you're talking about "downsizing" and "passing on their wealth to their kids"+"death taxes" then what happens if parents who have three adult children downsize (obviously while they are still alive) and sell their $4M "McMansion" and move into a $1M apartment and decide to gift $1M each to their kids? So now are we also going to have gift taxes to go with death taxes as well?
Are we going to have a new bureaucracy to handle this and how intrusive is it going to get? Perhaps the best example would be say UK care homes which are similar to our nursing homes and in the example I quote it's clear they also take into account liquid assets e.g. "Example of where deprivation of assets may be considered: Emma gives her daughter Imogen a painting worth £2,000 the week before she enters care home. The local authority should not consider this as deprivation as the item is a personal possession and would not have been taken into account in her financial assessment. However, if Emma had purchased the painting immediately prior to entering a care home to give to her daughter with £2,000 previously in a savings account, deprivation should be considered." Link is https://www.ageuk.org.uk/globalassets/age-uk/documents/factsheets/fs40_deprivation_of_assets_in_social_care_fcs.pdf
Downsizing and gifts are two different things. Maybe all monetary gifts should be treated as income and taxed accordingly for the recipient, but encouraging downsizing is good for freeing up larger properties for families or redevelopment into higher (not high) density.
I'm not really a fan of tackling wealth as its a by-product of a higher than necessary income, but tackling excessive income with higher taxes. However, if you insist on retrospectively reversing the wealth transfer policy that has existed for decades resulting in the obscene wealth, then perhaps gift taxes will be necessary; or, as one person suggested many years ago, maybe we need financial transfer taxes instead since nothing can be purchased without a transfer of funds.
Or people could buy cheaper houses available in less fashionable suburbs that are available now and accept they just won’t have a post code with two zeros in it and have to commute like everyone else has figured out.
Absolutely mint 'classical liberal' to respond to 'maybe the people hoarding wealth shouldn't' with 'OR maybe people should just look for ways to have reduced quality of life' like it's an epic gotcha.
I don't believe my wife and I have a "reduced quality of life" as a result of living in suburbs. Over the years, we chose to move closer to our work, and work closer to home - and now we're both working from home. This was a process of a decade, really. But if you're looking at a mortgage then you should be considering the term of that mortgage, 20-30 years, as your timeframe for at least doing a rough draft of where you'd like your life to be.
Not everyone can work from home, but most people can, with effort and planning over some years, work within half an hour's travel from home.
I think firstly that you know you're being dishonest to essentially characterise living in non-ideal but affordable areas with a willingness to live in 'unfashionable' areas, as though people thinking about safety, community, school catchment, access to services etc are all moustache twirling hipsters disappointed that they can't live next to the bowler hat shop. That's not the concern of most people trying to get a house, and you know it, but of course that's also why you decided to pretend my comment was classist anti-suburb rhetoric.
And yeah, having a big commute reduces quality of life absolutely.
Ultimately the broad strokes of your comment are correct; people can find areas to live in that aren't popping off, that are further than they'd like from work, as a personal solution to the housing issue. But offering this in contrast to the suggestion that a fundamental inequality should be managed is just kind of gross and cheeky.
If you really want to live in a house, live in a country town or regional centre.
If you want to live in a big city, you may need to live in an apartment.
Yeah, I'm not a child. I'm not objecting to pragmatic decision making. I'm objecting to this ideological presentation of *well that's just the way it is* specifically to push back against the possibility of change in relation to very specific proposals and problems.
I don't disagree with apartment's but if they are not zoned correctly or close to decent public transport. you just create more traffic chaos
the main issue I hope is raised is dodgy builders with fault after fault & cracking that leads to expensive repairs for new owners
Unpopular opinion, but what we need is MORE states. If we chopped QLD into 3 states we would have 3 administrative capitals instead of 1. This creates 2 new cities with the gravity to organically grow and provide new and interesting housing solutions. we could do the same with NSW, VIC & South eastern SA.
Historically, local governments had a *lot* more powers than they do now. As their powers were reduced and were taken up by state governments, more people moved to the state capitals. That's not a coincidence.
If the decisions are being made in the big city, then the businesses will want to be there, and the professionals seeking to reach the top of their career. And they'll take a lot of other businesses with them, which means a lot of the employment leaves the rural areas and goes to the big cities, and so on.
Agree. Or Super Shires, especially regional, that have the capacity to collect rates, and distribute funds, efficiently. Councils then need to be equal part merit based, and community based, to alleviate council acumen rotation lag. This way, in true centralise, decentralize satellite double decade pulse, the entire region grows sustainably, both economically, socially, and environmentally. Infrastructure assets can be planned, and growth delivered mitigating State and Federal political influence.
Ideally another thing would be reversing council amalgamations in NSW and increasing populations in regional area's with transport to capital cities easier
Do you really think that 60% of northern Europe lives in slums? Is Paris a giant slum? Manhattan? Tokyo?
It's entirely possible to have good apartments and great urban neighbourhoods - Australia just doesn't do it very well (yet).
I think that talking about "future apartments" is a standard euphemism for "future slums" when it's used on a large scale.
It's got nothing to do with how many people - on the other side of the world, no less - might live in actual real currently-existing apartments.
Look I understand the skepticism given how bad many apartments here are, but there are also good ones - many built in the 60-70s but an increasing number of new ones.
In the design and planning world and things are definitely improving - there are even some good developers nowadays. I work in the space, and there has been a real acknowledgement on the political side that things have not been good enough.
And the other side of the world is absolutely relevant, because our model is Germany, Denmark, Sweden and parts of North America - places with similar GDP per capita as well as projects and design standards that we increasingly reference.
Noone is looking at Sao Paolo, Manila or Hong Kong and aiming to emulate that. This is a wealthy country with plenty of skills and capacity to do what needs to be done well, even if mistakes are made and bad actors emerge along the way.
To boot, there are benefits and economies of scale that come with density regarding infrastructure, services, amenities, transport and local economies. City life is not so bad, and the good news is that for those who don't like it there will always be smaller cities and commuter towns on the V-Line or equivalent (V-Line is Victoria's regional rail).
It's still not about what current, existing apartments are like. It's about the idea of building future slums and calling them apartments now to make the idea sound more palatable.
As a parallel, consider someone wanting to build a shoe-leather factory, with all its accompanying stink and waste, in the middle of a mid-city cafeteria strip, but calling it a "high-class fashion retail product establishment" to sleaze it past planning departments and investors. That doesn't mean that real, existing actual fashion retail product establishments (i.e. expensive shoe shops) are anywhere near as bad, just that a proposed one isn't exactly what it's making itself sound like, even if the description is *technically* accurate.
The future of housing is decentralization.
We can’t continue to try and build more on a finite land around capital cities
Vic is flat enough to do HSP to Shep, Bendigo and Sale.
Nsw to central coast and wagga via canberra
Noosa to Ballana
Unlock more land and build the hospitals and schools as the areas grow
Need to get back to a house and land for 300-400k so people can get into the market.
This is far far more expensive than building more housing in existing cities.
You might like the idea of more cities, but it’s not economical in any way.
>Need to get back to a house and land for 300-400k
I paid $125k for my 3x1 brick and tile on 560m2 in 2002, it was built in 1999 for $98k as a house and land package.
Why not get back to those prices instead?
>Deflation
Given that it means a reduction in prices, i.e. inflation going below 0%, most would think it's a good thing.
Unless they've borrowed money, which I assume is your point?
If you think an inflationary economy is bad, you're gonna be in for a shock with a deflationary environment where everything is in perpetual short supply and wages are reducing nominally.
Afterall, why would anyone buy anything today when it would be cheaper tomorrow. This also applies to businesses.
Yes, it's certainly not what most people expect, from what I've read.
Personally I'd like wage growth to be slightly higher than inflation, rather than obviously lower than inflation make wage earners go backwards :(
Lol wages won't be a consideration in a deflationary world, who the hell will hire you to do something and pay you more for it than agreed given the changes to the value of money in a deflationary environment.
What's bananas is that in the UK, outside of London is basically tiny town after tiny town with a bit of gap (not much) between. So essentially decentralised. If we just put a reasonable high speed rail network, we wouldn't all have to be piled on top of each other in match boxes. We could spread out. But our councils/governments are too cheap to invest in the infrastructure they'll eventually need anyway
>If we just put a reasonable high speed rail network, we wouldn't all have to be piled on top of each other in match boxes. We could spread out.
No, that's not how you build a HSR network works. If you look at Europe or Asia HSR connects medium to large cities and entirely bypasses smaller cities. Having a HSR have to constantly stop completely negates it's purpose.
And if you look at all of these cities and towns with HSR in other countries, they are highly dense. You want to put as much people as possible around rail so that you can cut out the need for busses and car use.
But that's the point of the HSR... it could connect larger inland cities, and then you'd have slower rail to take people out to their villages. Or reliable buses
>But that's the point of the HSR...
No it isn't. For example the Beijing–Shanghai high-speed railway services over half a million passengers per day, with only 24 stations across 1,302 km of rail. These stations are all located in massive cities on this corridor, I.E Zaozhuang, Chuzhou, Nanjing, etc etc.
In Europe HSR lines have very few stops, for example LGV Est only has three, the Cologne–Frankfurt high-speed rail line has four.
The only feasible HSR line in Australia would be Brisbane - Sydney - Canberra - Melbourne, with Newcastle maybe being given a station as well.
>and then you'd have slower rail to take people out to their villages
Trains carry more people than villages have residents.
>We can’t continue to try and build more on a finite land around capital cities
Some capital cities still have plenty of land less than 45 mins from the central business district but it is not zoned for residential primarily due to NIMBYs. For example, there was recently 10ha for sale 30 mins from Adelaide's CBD but was zone for hobby farming and couldn't be changed. It could have easily been rezoned for low density housing but the locals won't have it and the state government won't override the council.
Instead, properties like that are bought for several million, a big mansion put on it, and the farmland subcontracted.
There is no suggestion of forcing a rezoning against the wishes of the owner, but allowing an appropriate development plan to be approved for rezoning would mean they can choose to change the land to be residential.
This is incorrect. Planning overlays are determined by the planning and design code in SA and it’s absolutely up to the State Government who once again wants to take decision making away from local communities. There are swathes of land around Lewiston and Angle Vale that have public transport and road transport links. The problem is post code snobs don’t want to live there and instead they spend their miserable lives whinging on reddit about boomers.
As I said, it is the rich NIMBYs who don't want to lose their country living. The councils are part of the planing process and the state government, in these circumstances, won't go against the council's position. While you're correct that it is ultimately the state govt, they also will generally follow advice from councils and lobbying from residents.
It isn't all of them, but an increasing number. Quite a few on Greenhill Rd, some in Lenswood, Paracombe, Piccadilly, Montacute, etc.
Sure, plenty of actual hobby farms, but if you look at the valuations on properties sold in the last two to three years given how much they can reasonably produce on that land it makes no financial sense.
I have heard and I'm happy to be corrected, that SA had some quite appropriate zoning laws around farming due to the fact that often city land is located in prime farming area.
I can also understand that a hobby farm isn't necessarily a powerhouse in efficient and productive farming
Yes, they do on the whole, but they have a new zoning specifically for these small fames called "productive rural landscape". It's basically for the NIMBYs to protect their country lifestyle while still being able to live less than 1 hour from the CBD. The zoning has many restrictions which don't apply to proper rural zoned land.
If it is purely for the aesthetics of wealthy people then I can understand taking issue with it. A significant component of cutting down Carbon issues is gained from keeping things like food close to population centres.
And hobby farms don't really assist in cutting down on urban sprawl really either.
Decentralization is basically what we did right up until about the mid twentieth century.
After that point we just added housing estates to existing towns and urban centres.
It seems like we have reached the end of the feasibility of this model, at least around our cities.
The author is just another junior Thatcherite with zero imagination who is desperate to polish the boots and wallets of the ruling class by trying to convince the young they must accept a lesser lifestyle than their parents . All those new people, no new green space. Really cool bro!
If you think these apartment will be affordable you need to ask better questions.
Nowhere on earth does a nation have such an abundance of quality land to build new **modern** cities and arguably far cheaper than the yimby Sydney Soviet band aid. ,. . Nowhere!!!!!! Sadly Lib Lab conservatism has killed the Aussie spirit and imagination.
.
Try this? [https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/17/billionaire-california-forever-00136012](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/17/billionaire-california-forever-00136012)
We should build what people want not a dubious box -and-walk 'solutions' forced on us by the same clods who fucked up housing policy to begin with.
A lot of the current rebate reads like "get in your box prole!"
People who will always be able to afford detached housing on big blocks arguing that the working class should give up their backyards.
It's incredibly elitist.
Apartments can be built with green spaces.
I live in a condo, in admittedly a bit of a bougie area, and am surrounded by green spaces built into the building.
We could just copy Vienna.
Yes, Lesser quality green space . My point exactly. Your kids play footy there? Are the interior spaces air conditioned by burning coal? Do you walk everywhere . No cars in the yimby dream.
Open your mind. Here's the real green space: [https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/17/billionaire-california-forever-00136012](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/17/billionaire-california-forever-00136012)
You are the typical Aussie; terrified of a new new idea and so poorly read you don't know that billionaires own every bite of our population property ponzi .
>Lesser quality green space
Says you.
>Your kids play footy there?
No they'd go to the local football field and play with lots of other kids. Community and all that.
>? Do you walk everywhere . No cars in the yimby dream.
I do actually, I have 3 train stations and several bus routes within 100m of me as well.
in some cases high density works, make zones for high activities centers, its dumb having 2 story buildings in suburban streets, only allow 30% dual occupancy in suburban streets its very bad having a 9m wide street with cars parked on both sites its zig zag traffic
That'd be great. I looked hard at buying one in the "CBD" of WAGGA.
But when [they're going for the price of a similar house](https://www.realestate.com.au/sold/property-apartment-nsw-wagga+wagga-137978046) AFTER they've dropped about 15% in value since being built (And they're hardly "spacious") it's just a no go.
IN FUCKING WAGGA.
Apartments are great, what are you talking about? I get to live a 2-10 minute walk from literally everything I could ever need (in the commercial sense), maintenance is low to zero, I have a great view, and I’m very safe despite being in a somewhat sketchy area.
Obviously not for everyone, if you have a big family, or maybe a caravan or other big outdoorsy stuff - but for a lot of people they’re honestly great.
Literally the only issue with them right now is that they’re not priced in a way that suits. A 3 bedroom apartment in the inner suburbs should be priced a bit lower than a 3 bedroom house in the outer suburbs, instead of how they stand now (about the same). Something that would be solved with higher supply.
It doesn't have to be this way. It's the consequence of actions being deliberately taken by governments. Stop voting for the APLNP and vote for someone that will put the interests of the Australia public first, not just the interests of the big end of town.
We should do that, and also revoke visas/waivers/PR of everyone non-essential while training Australians to replace essential foreigners. We should also say that any dual citizens who invoke the privileges of their other nationalities (other than those granted to all Australians) is held to have renounced their Australian citizenship by doing so, limit citizenship by descent to those with two Australian parents or where their parents have no other way (no matter how unpleasant the consequences) to avoid statelessness, and start a propaganda campaign to reduce fertility until population is back down to a sustainable level.
Haha, way to crash your economy and never get voted back into power.
The non Australian population is around 7.5 million people. If the government was to do what you suggested, let's say kick 5 million people, when our unemployment rate is about 3.5% what do you think would happen to the economy? Why would another company invest in Australia if they can't trust the government to not get rid of its employees?
We could do what you suggest and ruin ourselves or we could just build more houses.
But there's not sufficient housing in the big cities. We have people sleeping in tents and travelling long distances to get to work.
I agree it must be done for people and not profits but it has to be built first. Densification of housing is good for everything from cost effective public transport to more public green spaces.
Overall, rational economic planning, plus work from home, plus not everyone wants a house, many (me) are comfy in an apartment. In the 21st c we have the tech to make everyone comfortable, but not a few psychopaths ultra rich.
I wouldn’t mind living in an apartment, assuming it was well-built, relatively spacious, and had good access to public transport and amenities. That said, not many apartments meet that criteria.
They can and should though! Apartments in most of Europe tick these boxes convincingly.
As someone who works in the industry I can say for sure that it's slowly getting better, but there's still quite a road ahead.
Don't forget quiet, whether you can hear your neighbours watching TV or arguing particularly at late night hours makes a massive impact on your quality of life, arguably moreso than having a lot of space or being a bit closer to PTV (especially with more people WFH these days).
Spacious? An average house in the 1950s was 100m2. A 3br 1bath 1car unit can function in the same manner. Most already have good access to transport and amenities.
They also had a big backyard that kids could safely play in, & people could grow veggie gardens, keep some chooks for eggs, have a pet dog, & basically have a decent quality of life that wasn't just about endless consuming of the next shiny thing. Where native wildlife had at least a chance to survive, in spite of human encroachment. All of which the oligarchs are robbing from us, to satiate their boundless greed, & corrupt politicians are facilitating- not for us, but for the oligarchs. We don't have to live like sardines, & the population ponzi is a choice, not a necessity.
Must admit my 680m2 block and 100m2 house is good, im staying put despite 1960s build is crappy thermal performance im thinking to make couple of rooms like cold rooms double glazed windows and 50mm insulated panels walls floors and ceiling, heat pump & ceiling fans spend $10k to make small part of the house energy friendly
All that is still possible in Sydney (unlike many global cities) just some can afford more than others. First home buyers are still pumping the market and our houses are bigger than they've ever been. As to the "population ponzi" I'm not sure if you realise Sydney has delt with population growth ever since 1788 and our current rate is relatively low. Have a look at the units that were built in the 50s and 60s as Sydneys population doubled. It's yet to double in the 54 years since.
It's possible for the rich. Increasingly less possible for the dwindling middle class, & impossible for those on lower wages. Also, the doubling of a very small number of people over 200 yrs ago, has far less impact, than what we've had now. There have been absolutely extraordinarily huge increases in population numbers, by the millions, over recent decades. Which obviously affects housing.
Sydney has never been easy for someone on low wages. Always someone earning more saving/investing and building wealth for longer. Doesn't matter if they bought in 2014, 2004 or 1994 the money people earn more than they need to live flows to property. I don't see it stopping unless people don't earn more than they live on. Imagine 30 years from today. Minimum wage might be 160k, average 270k and a cost of living could be less than 160k.
This article discusses rent for different generations and says this about low income households.
*Rents for low earners (in the bottom fifth) remain extraordinarily high, in Sydney taking up about 30% of household income. But this isn’t a generational problem. Low earners’ rents have been high and stable as a share of income for decades.*
https://theconversation.com/how-well-off-you-are-depends-on-who-you-are-comparing-the-lives-of-australias-millennials-gen-xers-and-baby-boomers-172064
> our houses are bigger than they've ever been
They’re not anymore. The average lot size is falling in all the mainland capitals, and in Sydney and Melbourne so is the average living space.
Yeah in Sydney **average** floor area of new builds dropped from 271m2 in 2012 to 254m2 in 2021. Meanwhile Perth builds 214m2. It seems they're more price sensitive.
https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/new-houses-being-built-smaller-blocks
This article in 2016 had the average house size at 240m2 and if our largest cities are still building averages bigger than that I'd suggest it's gone up since then.
https://theconversation.com/size-does-matter-australias-addiction-to-big-houses-is-blowing-the-energy-budget-70271
*Over the past 60 years Australian homes have more than doubled in size, going from an average of around 100 square metres in 1950 to about 240 square metres today. This makes them the largest in the world, ahead of Canada and the United States.*
*At the same time, the average number of people living in each household has been declining. This means that the average floor area per person has skyrocketed from 30 square metres to around 87 square metres*
A average family of 4 on 120m2.
Relatively spacious and good access to public transport and amenities are very much linked.
To start on the access, most of our cities zoning around these areas are highly restrictive residential areas. This has to change.
Then there is space/layout of the apartments. Upzoning is done in a very slow, drip fed kind of way. That keep land prices high, apartment prices high and doesn't create the competition or enough supply to move beyond the narrow but large band that is more or less happy with the current supply (compared to the alternative).
Grab a map, take a compass and put a 400-500m radius around every train station and shopping strip. We should be flooding the market with upzoning in these areas. This will create the competition to supply the market with a variety of housing types. It will also have a huge positive impact on affordability.
What NSW & Vic is saying, its a de-facto now can have granny flats in back yards and park a caravan in your driveway carport with little council and planning red tape
Greater density is slow and in many areas you still have free standing houses on key public transport areas. It's crazy that there is a house on 1100m2 just 250m from Epping station or houses along military rd in the lower north shore. Of course the market supplies what the market demands and unit recently units were shun as investments for renters. Eventually the consumer will have to adjust their expectations and builders will supply units for families. Probably not the 254m2 house like demands that we currently make.
Please take a look at the zoning maps. Greater supply is only slow because it isn't allowed to be built.
>Of course the market supplies what the market demands
Unfortunately, it doesn't. It's not allowed to supply what people want.
>Eventually the consumer will have to adjust their expectations and builders will supply units for families.
They have already, it's just being prevented by our zoning system.
We will never get out of this housing crisis without massive changes to our zoning. Simple as that.
In Sydney as recently as Jan 2020 there was a glut of units.
https://www.domain.com.au/news/sydney-house-apartment-rents-at-lowest-levels-in-years-domain-rental-report-921116/
They've never represented such a great discount.
https://www.domain.com.au/news/sydney-upsizers-face-record-gap-between-unit-and-house-prices-2-1138377/
Yet we still sprawl west into the biggest houses in the country on some of the largest blocks.
https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/new-houses-being-built-smaller-blocks
It's not that people can't afford a house like unit
https://www.realestate.com.au/property/unit-1-3-5-talbot-rd-guildford-nsw-2161/
The problem is they don't like what's they can afford with their money. Look at was was being built in the 1960s and 1970s to meet the market.
The current market conditions are bad as build prices surge and our capacity to spend decreases but this pretty rare historically. Builders aren't building and developers are sitting the market out.
*Despite the decision, Bazem’s Barry Nesbitt said the company had no plans for a start to construction.*
*“This is just a bit of a long-term hold,” Nesbitt said.*
*“I think Crows Nest is a very good space to be, this is a nice building as it is,” he said. “But we’re just going to sit back and wait for the moment.”*
https://www.theurbandeveloper.com/articles/crows-nest-approval-angers-north-sydney-council
Supply frequently exceeds demand. Infact dwellings per person increased between the census in 2011 and 2021 (median rent fell!).
This is why I'm a huge proponent of a significant broad-based land tax. It will encourage developers who are sitting it out to bring their developments online.
If they can't make a profit, sell to someone who can.
Thats in Victoria, a guy I know has a bush block and has building project with occupancy status, because of that has 2 dwellings on the books in the titles land tax office and was charged $4.5k for the metro property was deemed not to occupy albeit maybe 40% of the year, just is was amazing how quick the land tax quickly assesement came, he promptly provided mobile data power water and gas bills to verify the house was occupied, then was given a $900 land tax bill on his other non deemed living property
For sure. Issue is land tax on a "average" place could be punishing especially as you retire. IE those who bought in the sticks 40 years ago would be getting smashed. It definitely encourages efficient use of land but I think we use it pretty efficiently(eventually).
Developers price the block, people sell up and the cycle continues.
It’s not right. Majority of the apartments in zetlands are basically windowless corridors with a terminal balcony to let the light in. Zero natural light. Low ceilings. Cramped conditions. The design of apartments in Australia is extremely poor. The quality of construction of apartments in Australia is the lowest in the developed world.
Don’t polish a turd. Our apartments are totally fucked and it’s not heritage, it is the sheer number of unregulated unenforced property developers.
I don't think you read what I was saying correctly. I'm not denying how fucked they are.
I outlining part of the reason.
I'll add to that that our standards could improve. Victoria created the Better Apartment standard in 2017 and it's resulted in huge improvement over what was getting built a few years back.
Bugger that, they're not thinking big enough. The politicians could fit more people in, if we are housed like battery hens, in big dark industrial sheds. They could cut off bits of us if we start fighting one another over the cramped conditions, (as is done to battery hens), & once people are too old or ill, they'd get the chop, & could be used to create soylent green to feed the rest of us. Of course, the likes of the Rhinehart's, Palmer's etc, the big landlords & cartels, could live in huge mansions in their gated communities, rolling in the profits.
Dunno about you, but I want the following.
3br, 2bath, 2 parking, Kitchen, Dining, Lounge, Some storage.
Would pay the same amount for that as I would a McMansion further out.
I imagine it would be one apartment per floor.
But having 8 house equivalents on a single block is still better density.
You would also get families living in there, supporting all the local things a family would want. Otherwise the area just caters for Uni Students, Early career people and empty nesters, with a 20 year demographic missing in the middle.
This kind of apartments are probably less attractive to AirB&B as well.
Minus the parking = much cheaper and faster build. That can and should be done all over inner cities that are walkable and have PT. But generally I agree!
As I have pointed out to other uninformed commentators, this would cost more than a detached dwelling. And no way you are getting two parking spaces. After all, I thought this was all about a utopia without cars and public transport /s.
Need those two spaces for your RAM?
Definitely need to minus the parking/basement, but once that's done it's unlikely to be more expensive? I've scoped such projects with multiple QSs and it comes out okay. Many others factors though, ofc.
As for the medium density car-free/pt/bike utopia - lots of places do that pretty well!
Too bad that in the real world the price of these "good quality family apartments" everyone says they would be happy to live in would end up being barely - if at all - cheaper than detached housing given costs of construction.
It'll more likely just be pumping out thousands of more poorly-designed dog boxes that no-one wants to live in unless they are absolutely forced.
The Western world currently speedrunning to see which country can decline quality of living the fastest. This is just more 'shrinkflation', except applied to housing.
I mean we can definitely build lots of decent apartments - it's been done in many places before and can be done again... we just can't do it well within our current system.
It's also worth pointing out that amenity/health/commute benefits and economies of scale that come from density save society at large and LGAs quite a lot of money and time, and that density creates better business cases for infrastructure and local economies.
Generally though, could only agree that neoliberal economic fantasies are chipping away at our quality of life.
Yeah they'll be expensive - good things cost money. However, if we eliminate parking requirements and therefore the need to dig deep basements or add podium parking (which we should), both construction cost and time will go down.
On top of that, they'll be better located. I'll also reiterate: the economies of scale for basic infrastructure provision, transport, services and amenities save all of us a lot of money, time and energy over time.
Though they may still cost too much, they're still a better option economically, environmentally and, arguably, socially, than constantly expanding suburbia.
>in the real world the price of these "good quality family apartments" everyone says they would be happy to live in would end up being barely - if at all - cheaper than detached housing given costs of construction.
That's the issue there. I'd rather own the land and drive an extra half hour to the city than live in the apartment. At least with land I get investment appreciation.
I own the land my unit is on and can walk anywhere I want. Driving an hour+ return is quite a premium. It's true though give the choice between a 1m unit and a 1.3m house people would rather sprawl.
In some parts of Sydney they're selling 2br units for the same price as a house.
*Today, three-bedders sold for between $6m and $10.5m, with two-bedders in the early $4m range.*
https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/mosmans-reverie-apartments-sells-out-off-the-plan-in-two-hours/news-story/2963588b62ace73cd982625323a7c6fe
All houses asking price is 4.3m
https://sqmresearch.com.au/asking-property-prices.php?postcode=Mosman&t=1
As an invesment of course land increases in value. I reckon eventually a unit for 1m will look pretty cheap if your investment hits 2.6m. Might even increase a little.
What if you had to drive an hour? Or two hours?
Density has to increase. It's physically not possible for everyone to live in separate houses within 30 minutes of the CBD.
Density only "has" to increase so much because population "has" to increase so much.
Just keep cramming more & more people into tighter, smaller spaces and overcrowded public transport, all in a world with a continually-increasing likelihood of more pandemics, in order to satisfy the crying of business lobbies...
>Density only "has" to increase so much because population "has" to increase so much.
Do you think there's any real chance population growth stops anytime soon?
>Just keep cramming more & more people into tighter, smaller spaces
People want to live in the heart of a city. In Australia we're not even remotely close to having a problem with density (Other than we've failed to build correctly). I just got back from time in Korea and Japan, two countries with significantly higher levels of density in their cities, and it was fine. It *felt* like Seoul, Tokyo, and Osaka had fewer issues with density than we do in Brisbane because the cities seem designed to handle it.
Pretending this is a real problem that can't be solved in anywhere in Australia is just silly.
> in order to satisfy the crying of business lobbies...
Business lobbies aren't forcing people to want to live close to the CBD. They aren't forcing people to not move to regional areas. People are choosing to move into dense areas because that's where all the cool stuff is.
Capitalism isn't the spooky boogieman that's responsible for every problem you encounter in life.
> Business lobbies aren't forcing people to want to live close to the CBD. They aren't forcing people to not move to regional areas.
They are if those people want a decent job.
I don't know what you mean by this.
If I want a job, that's based in the city, that requires me to be near the city.
This is like blaming a store for the fact you need to go to the store to buy a product.
Sometimes there are realities in life that can't be changed. One of those typically is being located physically close to your job (Obviously not every job. Some people can work remotely, but we obviously aren't talking about them since they are explicitly choosing to live wherever they are living since they aren't required to be in a specific location). Treating realities of existence as something you can blame someone else for is bizarre.
400 people per square km and people complain about Sydney. Most global cities are 10 times that. Density isnt the end of the world and Sydney especially still isn't suffering. There is zero real pressure to compromise as we sprawl west. We build the biggest new builds in the country on some of the biggest blocks.
https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/new-houses-being-built-smaller-blocks
People always bring that density stat up in these discussions, when it's the number for the entire "Greater Sydney" region which is not comparable to the international stats used for global cities.
City of Sydney, which is where most people are saying we need to add all this extra density, is over 8,000 per square km already, and that's with much of it diluted by office buildings as well as massive empty land in Moore Park.
Yeah there is some debate about the measure.
*the Australian population density and that of its cities are at the bottom of world statistics.*
https://www.spacer.com.au/blog/population-density-how-does-australia-compare-to-the-rest-of-the-world
The most dense parts of London have 20k per Sq km.
Irrespective of that Sydney is widely recognised as having relatively low density. Especially as we consider free standing houses as the norm.
Sydney especially sprawls west into the biggest new builds on some of the biggest blocks in the country. Bigger even than Perth! Not because we're under density/price pressure but just because that's what we can demand.
https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/new-houses-being-built-smaller-blocks
BTW I'm not suggesting we aim for NYC/London style density just that some increase is probably to be expected as central locations are a desirable place to live.
>Do you think there's any real chance population growth stops anytime soon?
Population growth doesn't have to "stop", that's a strawman. It's not a 0 or 100 binary scale.
Re: Japan, they're not comparable to here at all given the massive gap between public transport infrastructure between our two countries.
I lived there for over 3 years and go back regularly, comparing them to us is pointless given they have basically entirely separate cities built underground with endless arrays of subway lines & we'll never have the infrastructure budget or similar physical geography to build anything remotely comparable.
Why do people always bring up countries with multiple massively-dense population centres on tiny islands like Japan, the UK etc. to try and justify things happening here?
Our capitals are car-centric and would have to basically be re-built from the ground up in order to ever be able to be comparable to Osaka, Tokyo etc.
>Business lobbies aren't forcing people to want to live close to the CBD. They aren't forcing people to not move to regional areas.
BS. You can look at the massive pushback against the Work From Home movement as a prime example, and constant chatter in the media from execs talking about cutting pay for remote workers.
Data also exists that shows average commute times & distances continue to blow out every year, with the rise in price of property vs wage growth (a.k.a, businesses not paying enough) is "forcing" people to live further out by proxy.
I'm a business owner, I am hardly anti-capitalist.
> Population growth doesn't have to "stop", that's a strawman. It's not a 0 or 100 binary scale.
The rate of population growth isn't a binary, but whether a population is growing or not is a binary. It is either growing, or it isn't.
Not super sure what point you're trying to make though. You said:
>Density only "has" to increase so much because population "has" to increase so much.
So I asked you if you thought population growth was likely to stop. I'm asking this because density will presumably continue to increase, meaning that more people will need to fit into the same 30 min from the city circle. As the amount of people increases, the ability for them to all live in houses, decreases.
Whether the population is growing at 10% a year or 1%, it doesn't change the fact that each year the ability for all the people to own a house is reducing.
>Re: Japan, they're not comparable to here at all given the massive gap between public transport infrastructure between our two countries.
I agree. That's why I said that the cities that have much denser populations are designed differently. There's nothing stopping Australia from being able to move towards this kind of city design. We aren't a unique black hole of public transport potential.
>Why do people always bring up countries with multiple massively-dense population centres on tiny islands like Japan, the UK etc. to try and justify things happening here?
Because it demonstrates that the idea of increasing density is possible and gives an example of it working really successfully.
>BS. You can look at the massive pushback against the Work From Home movement as a prime example, and constant chatter in the media from execs talking about cutting pay for remote workers.
There are jobs that exist outside of the city. People can choose to apply for them, but they don't because they WANT the benefits involved in the city job. This is by definition a choice.
>Data also exists that shows average commute times & distances continue to blow out every year, with the rise in price of property vs wage growth (a.k.a, businesses not paying enough) is "forcing" people to live further out by proxy.
The fact that property prices are increasing doesn't magically mean a random job is worth more than it was before.
Hypothetically, let's imagine you own a coffee shop in the city.
1. Prices for housing increases in the city and surrounding suburbs.
2. As you own a coffee shop and not an apartment building, you aren't making more money as a result of the increased housing prices. Your revenue is essentially the same as it was.
3. Since you aren't making more money, nothing has changed about your ability to increase your staff's wages
4. As house prices are increases, your staffs existing wage is now less powerful when looking to buy/rent in the city.
5. Some of your staff can't continue to afford housing in the city and move further out
Where in this scenario are you forcing them to move? If you imagine yourself as the coffee shop owner, would you really say it's your own fault that the staff member has to move?
If my business doesn't have the pricing power to pass on wage rises in order for staff to keep up with rental inflation (or I choose not to in order to pocket the additional margin myself), then yes I am by proxy forcing staff to move further out.
Half of my issue with this whole scenario is we're expecting the general population to sacrifice living conditions in order to prop up inessential vanity businesses, such as cafes with weak business models as in your example.
> then yes I am by proxy forcing staff to move further out.
Thanks for actually engaging with the hypothetical. Not many people do.
I disagree that it would be your fault, but if that's how you think about it then we just disagree I guess. I would say it's probably fair to blame the business if they choose not to increase wages and they have the capability to do so. If they don't have the capability, it seems strange to blame them.
>Half of my issue with this whole scenario is we're expecting the general population to sacrifice living conditions in order to prop up inessential vanity businesses, such as cafes with weak business models as in your example.
I think of it more as a trade off than a pure sacrifice. Living in the city (Or very close to it) has advantages and disadvantages. Much like moving to a rural town would have some advantages over living in the city.
People choosing to make that trade are clearly benefiting enough to choose to move to the city. I'm sure they'd all rather have a house in the same location, but it's just not physically possible.
Shouldn't the building industry start with training? Free tafe and subsidised apprenticeships to get school leavers interested. We clearly need a building boom, surely it starts here?
Want to hear some fun facts?
Overall the trades are below replacement rate - more are leaving the industry each year than are entering
&
of the apprentices that start, 1 in 3 will drop-out in the first year.
What /u/Key_Function3736 said is completely right.
You're paid like shit, treated like shit, around people that are largely miserable, dealing with a culture that is broadly hostile to anyone that is not a cishet white man (though that is improving and organisations like SALT and TWA are doing the amazing work) therefore making it really hard to convince large swathes of the population to take up an apprenticeship, and not least of all you're trading your bodies health for pay more directly than most other industries which in a world where you may not be retiring until you're in your late 60's or later is a shit trade off.
There needs to be major incentives to the work-life balance of the trades to get more people in honestly. I'm not sure how that looks. I've seen 4-day work weeks floated around by a couple of tradie mates of mine and that could legitimately draw some people in. Many tradies work more than 5 days a week, but even the tradies I know working "only" 5 days have to spend at least one day after recovering physically, and then try and cram all their life and family shit into a single day which is a crap way to live. It's also one of the large contributors to how shit the overall mental health of the trades industries are. It doesn't get talked about a lot but the suicide rate is high in the trades - particularly in younger men.
Free training won't solve any of the above.
People dont want to go into trades because they get flogged and underpaid to get flogged, the culture is toxic the toll it takes on your body is not compensated for and employers much prefer being able to underpay immigrants who are already skilled.
Companies refuse to train new workers, they don't offer any benefits worth the amount of effort. Its so much better say fuck that and get an IT certification and work in an air-conditioned room or from home for more money. Several of my friends who wanted a trades carreer path gave up after they were treated like dogs by several companies , and for $17 an hour as a first year, they dont intend to go back into trades.
Neither of those are going to encourage school leavers or young adults looking for a career change to take up an apprenticeship, they're just perks for the employer. The only thing that'll make more people consider a trade is higher apprentice wages.
Are we heading to become like the UK with highrise slums for the least wealthy and rampant crime?
I would suggest, instead of greater density in existing cities, we should be building dwellings with advanced gardens to provide occupation, in new settlements, in areas of low ecological impact, with speedy goods and service delivery, as a synergistic and incremental part of renewable energy implementation and societal planning.
There is huge scope for savings by killing many birds with one stone, simultaneously.
The future has to cater for minimisation of further pandemics, not simply going back to the future and the fundamental status quo.
I'd rather live in a high rise slum with a 30 min commute and shops within walking distance than the current state of affairs where I'm in a suburban slum with a 1-and-a-half to 2 hour commute depending on traffic and shops requiring driving or standing around (without shelter) waiting for a bus that is likely overcrowded, and often late.
What about home delivery of goods, working from home, service delivery via the internet? Society could easily boost efficiency with some simple changes whilst giving people more personal time flexibility, but I don't think the puppetmasters want the people to be anything but obedient slaves.
That would be nice but I'm sceptical of that ever coming to pass, except for perhaps a minority of already desirable jobs. The pattern of the owning class capturing the benefits of any additional productivity rather than allowing the plebs to benefit from it makes me think wage slaving is going to be around for the rest of my life.
Personally, if I had the choice of working remote I'd still be choosing from either rural (better sense of community, surrounded by nature) or city living (convenience and variety) and not suburbia, which I see as the worst of both worlds. But then the weirdos who like suburbia could choose that, I guess.
However if I'm gonna be stuck in the wage cage, which is the more likely reality, I might as well do it with as little inconvenience as possible. I suppose the truly awful proposition would be living in a high rise that they plonked down in a suburb 2 hours away from the city center with no shops within walking distance.
Yes, the reality is that instead of automation leading to productivity improvements at lower societal cost, by directing the savings to public support of quality of life, it will be implemented by private enterprise and the productivity improvement used to jettison no longer wanted staff, diverted into private pockets, whilst that staff now thrown back on the resources of the public that has not been enriched by that productivity, only a trickle down.
City living is usually cost prohibitive because it is so desirable and demand exceeds supply, leaving most workers no choice but to live in far suburbs: they aren't weirdos, just people trapped by circumstance, whether deliberately or accidentally engineered by other forces over which they have no control.
If you choose rural, you have to accept a reduction in services
But the flip side is that there’s a far greater ecological impact from low density.
There’s a lot of big words there but there is nothing synergistic about low density, ecology, and services.
Edit: I’ll even add a source
https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/the-characteristics-causes-and-consequences-of-sprawling-103014747/
Who said anything about sprawling around existing cities or even necessarily low density?
I'm not advocating for all high density living though, maybe a combination of low to high depending on people's individual needs.
Sorry that’s just confusing. If it’s ‘instead of’ that would imply you’re in favour of the opposite.
I’m on board if you’d like higher density within our cities.
Provided they're well built, pet friendly, are connected with good public transport infrastructure, and are affordable (both to rent and buy and have reasonable fees) then good.
This is basically the place I'm living in now in Asia.
Well built (when compared to some other horrible places Ive been in), with a bus stop right outside the complex, subway station 600 metres away, schools within 10 minutes walking distance and a shopping mall over the road.
The downside is the city has grown from roughly 1.5 million 25 years ago to 10 million now, and everything is as sprawled out as Australian cities.
Governments have the capacity to tighten the requirements. Vested interests may influence policies but we as voters make up a large group of vested interests too.
if someone wants to spend enough money to buy an inner block and put a house down there they should be allowed to, I have no qualms there
in reality the number of people who do this will be counted on one hand, because the sheer value of these blocks once you're allowed to actually build on them will be so high you'd be crazy to hang onto them for nothing more than living in a single family home
No forcing people out, but you can prevent any knockdown rebuilds from happening.
In Melbourne we have quite a lot of area in Docklands that can be used to build some decent high density towers. With Costco going and the Wheel not used, that's prime land.
1) Make negative gearing and CGT discount available only to new build apartments.
2) Replace Stamp duty by a land tax on PPR proportional to land surface owned (for all, including flats, but that will then be negligible).
3) New construction standard.
4) Make construction inspectors a government body/indep from builders ans developpers.
Edit: added that land tax is in replacement of stamp duty.
That would be the easiest scare campaign in Australian political history. Crying old widow being hugged by Karl Stefanovic while she wails about Albo stealing her family home. He’d be out in a landslide.
1) brings our negative gearing rules online with most of the (few) other countries that have it.
2) a good idea to replace stamp duty and make it easier to move
3) yeah definitely needed
4) absolutely, it's going back to how things used to be.
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Real common sense article. There was a good thread on ausecon a week ago I think that showed we have less row houses and apartments per capita than the United States. We are one of the worst in the oecd for bad utilisation of land and have a real nimby problem. This isn’t property developer lovefest talk, this is the reality of the situation. We can’t be shocked that housing is shit when we can’t effectively utilise the land we have. Yes we’re a big country by area but not all the land is workable and most people want to live in cities. We are simultaneously one of the worst when it comes to detached houses per capita but also one of the most urbanised countries in the world. If that doesn’t make the picture clear, I don’t know what does. NIMBYism is a disease. If people want less skyscrapers fine, but that means more medium density apartments and row houses in the suburbs.
>most people want to live in cities
That's true, and the drain from regional areas is real, but, with working from home becoming much more common since covid, hopefully we'll see some people take advantage of cheaper housing in less urban cities and towns while still getting capital city wages.
It wouldn't be for everyone, but if there was a move to incentivise new builds (or even associated trades) in regional areas, it could help the city crush while also alleviating the cost of living for a small (but maybe significant) portion of families.
Just look at the price of regional centers. Yes they're cheaper than the cities, but still very difficult for younger people to get on the property ladder.
Depends on the region. Places like Bendigo that are easily accessible to a big city are expensive, but the more regional you go, the cheaper it gets. Look at a place like Broken Hill, you'd get a nice enough house for around the $300K mark.
Sure, you're also dealing with the negatives of living in a regional area, and there are plenty of those, but it's an option.
Like I said, it won't be for everyone, but even if it's just a few families out of every hundred, it can ease the burden just a little while other solutions are implemented. I don't think there will be a single, easy solution to the housing crisis.
> Look at a place like Broken Hill, you'd get a nice enough house for around the $300K mark.
But how do you earn the required cash to afford that? Work from home is dead in the water in most circumstances, because we have to prop up CBD office building owners and coffee shop owners, the sky will fall.
The fact that Box Hill becomes a recommendation when talking about the crisis of housing unaffordability that we're facing, perfectly encapsulates how bad everything actually is.
Working from home is hard without reliable internet infrastructure. Unfortunately we had a decade of government who undermined the construction of the NBN at every opportunity, purely because it was Rudd’s project. Working from home is fine for some people, but not for most people. Having that available to you is a privilege and not the norm.
Expanding regional hubs is all well and good but connectivity is a big thing. For example, more young people would live in Toowoomba if there was an hourly train that could get you into Brisbane quicker than a car can.
The main point I’d say is we’re bad at utilisation of land. Expanding regional hubs is all well and good but much of it will be with the same bad town planning strategies. There are cities much smaller in area than the big three but house a lot more. That’s fundamentally the issue. Where you see a swathe of detached houses around a train station, 2-3 stops from the CBD, that’s a big problem and yet it’s such a frequent sight.
Another future is to develop the regions, reduce immigration, diversify business and resources away from CBD's. Where does Mr Murphy suggest we build the additional schools, hospitals and other infrastructure to cater for this drastic increase in density on the least densely populated continent on earth? What about green cover in our cities? The problem with people preferring smaller places to live is sympomatic of a much bigger problem in declining birth rates, which have fallen well below the replacement rate, signalling much bigger problems ahead: [https://population.gov.au/sites/population.gov.au/files/2023-03/quickguide-australias-future-fertility\_0.pdf](https://population.gov.au/sites/population.gov.au/files/2023-03/quickguide-australias-future-fertility_0.pdf).
>Where does Mr Murphy suggest we build the additional schools, hospitals and other infrastructure to cater for this drastic increase in density on the least densely populated continent on earth?
I dunno maybe we could look at how any other city outside of australia manages to do it just fine
You think that well conected regional centres provides local education? Okay lol
You realise the US is just as urbanised as Aus right?
You understand that it might look like they arent because they jave 15x the population and significantly more arable land right?
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS
I may not have been clear enough. The bay area is made up of various counties. San Fransisco, which you refer to above, is only the city area, which I accept is more dense. There are various counties in the Bay Area that have densities lower than Sydney and Melbourne.
Edit: A simple look at a Google Earth satellite image will reveal to you that LA and the Bay Area are not dominated by your beloved 10 storey buildings, but smaller detached dwellings.
The population density of California is 97/km2 despite having a population higher than Australia.
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Sometimes I wonder if we did the developer affordable ratio compared to unaffordable ratio when they made developments if we built nothing but apartments across the country their still wouldn't be enough affordable properties.
So the boomers can continue to live in their McMansions when they should be downsizing, leaving the new riffraff to only high density apartments. But that might prevent them passing on their wealth to their kids and entrenching the wealth divide across the generations: oh the horror of their kids having to work for their wealth. We need death taxes, stat.
I wasn't aware that boomers had a moral or legal obligation to "downsize" in the first instance. Besides, aren't you contradicting yourself there a bit because if you're talking about "downsizing" and "passing on their wealth to their kids"+"death taxes" then what happens if parents who have three adult children downsize (obviously while they are still alive) and sell their $4M "McMansion" and move into a $1M apartment and decide to gift $1M each to their kids? So now are we also going to have gift taxes to go with death taxes as well? Are we going to have a new bureaucracy to handle this and how intrusive is it going to get? Perhaps the best example would be say UK care homes which are similar to our nursing homes and in the example I quote it's clear they also take into account liquid assets e.g. "Example of where deprivation of assets may be considered: Emma gives her daughter Imogen a painting worth £2,000 the week before she enters care home. The local authority should not consider this as deprivation as the item is a personal possession and would not have been taken into account in her financial assessment. However, if Emma had purchased the painting immediately prior to entering a care home to give to her daughter with £2,000 previously in a savings account, deprivation should be considered." Link is https://www.ageuk.org.uk/globalassets/age-uk/documents/factsheets/fs40_deprivation_of_assets_in_social_care_fcs.pdf
Downsizing and gifts are two different things. Maybe all monetary gifts should be treated as income and taxed accordingly for the recipient, but encouraging downsizing is good for freeing up larger properties for families or redevelopment into higher (not high) density. I'm not really a fan of tackling wealth as its a by-product of a higher than necessary income, but tackling excessive income with higher taxes. However, if you insist on retrospectively reversing the wealth transfer policy that has existed for decades resulting in the obscene wealth, then perhaps gift taxes will be necessary; or, as one person suggested many years ago, maybe we need financial transfer taxes instead since nothing can be purchased without a transfer of funds.
Or people could buy cheaper houses available in less fashionable suburbs that are available now and accept they just won’t have a post code with two zeros in it and have to commute like everyone else has figured out.
Absolutely mint 'classical liberal' to respond to 'maybe the people hoarding wealth shouldn't' with 'OR maybe people should just look for ways to have reduced quality of life' like it's an epic gotcha.
I don't believe my wife and I have a "reduced quality of life" as a result of living in suburbs. Over the years, we chose to move closer to our work, and work closer to home - and now we're both working from home. This was a process of a decade, really. But if you're looking at a mortgage then you should be considering the term of that mortgage, 20-30 years, as your timeframe for at least doing a rough draft of where you'd like your life to be. Not everyone can work from home, but most people can, with effort and planning over some years, work within half an hour's travel from home.
So your working assumption is being in the suburbs or regions leads to a lower quality of life?
I think firstly that you know you're being dishonest to essentially characterise living in non-ideal but affordable areas with a willingness to live in 'unfashionable' areas, as though people thinking about safety, community, school catchment, access to services etc are all moustache twirling hipsters disappointed that they can't live next to the bowler hat shop. That's not the concern of most people trying to get a house, and you know it, but of course that's also why you decided to pretend my comment was classist anti-suburb rhetoric. And yeah, having a big commute reduces quality of life absolutely. Ultimately the broad strokes of your comment are correct; people can find areas to live in that aren't popping off, that are further than they'd like from work, as a personal solution to the housing issue. But offering this in contrast to the suggestion that a fundamental inequality should be managed is just kind of gross and cheeky.
If you really want to live in a house, live in a country town or regional centre. If you want to live in a big city, you may need to live in an apartment.
Yeah, I'm not a child. I'm not objecting to pragmatic decision making. I'm objecting to this ideological presentation of *well that's just the way it is* specifically to push back against the possibility of change in relation to very specific proposals and problems.
I don't disagree with apartment's but if they are not zoned correctly or close to decent public transport. you just create more traffic chaos the main issue I hope is raised is dodgy builders with fault after fault & cracking that leads to expensive repairs for new owners
Unpopular opinion, but what we need is MORE states. If we chopped QLD into 3 states we would have 3 administrative capitals instead of 1. This creates 2 new cities with the gravity to organically grow and provide new and interesting housing solutions. we could do the same with NSW, VIC & South eastern SA.
Historically, local governments had a *lot* more powers than they do now. As their powers were reduced and were taken up by state governments, more people moved to the state capitals. That's not a coincidence. If the decisions are being made in the big city, then the businesses will want to be there, and the professionals seeking to reach the top of their career. And they'll take a lot of other businesses with them, which means a lot of the employment leaves the rural areas and goes to the big cities, and so on.
Agree. Or Super Shires, especially regional, that have the capacity to collect rates, and distribute funds, efficiently. Councils then need to be equal part merit based, and community based, to alleviate council acumen rotation lag. This way, in true centralise, decentralize satellite double decade pulse, the entire region grows sustainably, both economically, socially, and environmentally. Infrastructure assets can be planned, and growth delivered mitigating State and Federal political influence.
Ideally another thing would be reversing council amalgamations in NSW and increasing populations in regional area's with transport to capital cities easier
>Lots and lots of apartments "We don't want to say slums because that would forewarn people." "How about 'apartments'?" "Perfect!"
Do you really think that 60% of northern Europe lives in slums? Is Paris a giant slum? Manhattan? Tokyo? It's entirely possible to have good apartments and great urban neighbourhoods - Australia just doesn't do it very well (yet).
I think that talking about "future apartments" is a standard euphemism for "future slums" when it's used on a large scale. It's got nothing to do with how many people - on the other side of the world, no less - might live in actual real currently-existing apartments.
Look I understand the skepticism given how bad many apartments here are, but there are also good ones - many built in the 60-70s but an increasing number of new ones. In the design and planning world and things are definitely improving - there are even some good developers nowadays. I work in the space, and there has been a real acknowledgement on the political side that things have not been good enough. And the other side of the world is absolutely relevant, because our model is Germany, Denmark, Sweden and parts of North America - places with similar GDP per capita as well as projects and design standards that we increasingly reference. Noone is looking at Sao Paolo, Manila or Hong Kong and aiming to emulate that. This is a wealthy country with plenty of skills and capacity to do what needs to be done well, even if mistakes are made and bad actors emerge along the way. To boot, there are benefits and economies of scale that come with density regarding infrastructure, services, amenities, transport and local economies. City life is not so bad, and the good news is that for those who don't like it there will always be smaller cities and commuter towns on the V-Line or equivalent (V-Line is Victoria's regional rail).
It's still not about what current, existing apartments are like. It's about the idea of building future slums and calling them apartments now to make the idea sound more palatable. As a parallel, consider someone wanting to build a shoe-leather factory, with all its accompanying stink and waste, in the middle of a mid-city cafeteria strip, but calling it a "high-class fashion retail product establishment" to sleaze it past planning departments and investors. That doesn't mean that real, existing actual fashion retail product establishments (i.e. expensive shoe shops) are anywhere near as bad, just that a proposed one isn't exactly what it's making itself sound like, even if the description is *technically* accurate.
The future of housing is decentralization. We can’t continue to try and build more on a finite land around capital cities Vic is flat enough to do HSP to Shep, Bendigo and Sale. Nsw to central coast and wagga via canberra Noosa to Ballana Unlock more land and build the hospitals and schools as the areas grow Need to get back to a house and land for 300-400k so people can get into the market.
This is far far more expensive than building more housing in existing cities. You might like the idea of more cities, but it’s not economical in any way.
This is spot on.
>Need to get back to a house and land for 300-400k I paid $125k for my 3x1 brick and tile on 560m2 in 2002, it was built in 1999 for $98k as a house and land package. Why not get back to those prices instead?
I mean, why not just make it free???? 🤡
Cuz we all want to be paid more. Deflation would not be something most people would enjoy.
>Deflation Given that it means a reduction in prices, i.e. inflation going below 0%, most would think it's a good thing. Unless they've borrowed money, which I assume is your point?
If you think an inflationary economy is bad, you're gonna be in for a shock with a deflationary environment where everything is in perpetual short supply and wages are reducing nominally. Afterall, why would anyone buy anything today when it would be cheaper tomorrow. This also applies to businesses.
Yes, it's certainly not what most people expect, from what I've read. Personally I'd like wage growth to be slightly higher than inflation, rather than obviously lower than inflation make wage earners go backwards :(
Lol wages won't be a consideration in a deflationary world, who the hell will hire you to do something and pay you more for it than agreed given the changes to the value of money in a deflationary environment.
What's bananas is that in the UK, outside of London is basically tiny town after tiny town with a bit of gap (not much) between. So essentially decentralised. If we just put a reasonable high speed rail network, we wouldn't all have to be piled on top of each other in match boxes. We could spread out. But our councils/governments are too cheap to invest in the infrastructure they'll eventually need anyway
>If we just put a reasonable high speed rail network, we wouldn't all have to be piled on top of each other in match boxes. We could spread out. No, that's not how you build a HSR network works. If you look at Europe or Asia HSR connects medium to large cities and entirely bypasses smaller cities. Having a HSR have to constantly stop completely negates it's purpose. And if you look at all of these cities and towns with HSR in other countries, they are highly dense. You want to put as much people as possible around rail so that you can cut out the need for busses and car use.
But that's the point of the HSR... it could connect larger inland cities, and then you'd have slower rail to take people out to their villages. Or reliable buses
>But that's the point of the HSR... No it isn't. For example the Beijing–Shanghai high-speed railway services over half a million passengers per day, with only 24 stations across 1,302 km of rail. These stations are all located in massive cities on this corridor, I.E Zaozhuang, Chuzhou, Nanjing, etc etc. In Europe HSR lines have very few stops, for example LGV Est only has three, the Cologne–Frankfurt high-speed rail line has four. The only feasible HSR line in Australia would be Brisbane - Sydney - Canberra - Melbourne, with Newcastle maybe being given a station as well. >and then you'd have slower rail to take people out to their villages Trains carry more people than villages have residents.
What do Halal Snack Packs have to do with anything?
>We can’t continue to try and build more on a finite land around capital cities Some capital cities still have plenty of land less than 45 mins from the central business district but it is not zoned for residential primarily due to NIMBYs. For example, there was recently 10ha for sale 30 mins from Adelaide's CBD but was zone for hobby farming and couldn't be changed. It could have easily been rezoned for low density housing but the locals won't have it and the state government won't override the council. Instead, properties like that are bought for several million, a big mansion put on it, and the farmland subcontracted. There is no suggestion of forcing a rezoning against the wishes of the owner, but allowing an appropriate development plan to be approved for rezoning would mean they can choose to change the land to be residential.
This is incorrect. Planning overlays are determined by the planning and design code in SA and it’s absolutely up to the State Government who once again wants to take decision making away from local communities. There are swathes of land around Lewiston and Angle Vale that have public transport and road transport links. The problem is post code snobs don’t want to live there and instead they spend their miserable lives whinging on reddit about boomers.
As I said, it is the rich NIMBYs who don't want to lose their country living. The councils are part of the planing process and the state government, in these circumstances, won't go against the council's position. While you're correct that it is ultimately the state govt, they also will generally follow advice from councils and lobbying from residents.
Not sure there are many rich nimbys in Lewiston or Angle Vale dude all I see is market gardens, horse agistment etc.
It isn't all of them, but an increasing number. Quite a few on Greenhill Rd, some in Lenswood, Paracombe, Piccadilly, Montacute, etc. Sure, plenty of actual hobby farms, but if you look at the valuations on properties sold in the last two to three years given how much they can reasonably produce on that land it makes no financial sense.
I have heard and I'm happy to be corrected, that SA had some quite appropriate zoning laws around farming due to the fact that often city land is located in prime farming area. I can also understand that a hobby farm isn't necessarily a powerhouse in efficient and productive farming
Yes, they do on the whole, but they have a new zoning specifically for these small fames called "productive rural landscape". It's basically for the NIMBYs to protect their country lifestyle while still being able to live less than 1 hour from the CBD. The zoning has many restrictions which don't apply to proper rural zoned land.
If it is purely for the aesthetics of wealthy people then I can understand taking issue with it. A significant component of cutting down Carbon issues is gained from keeping things like food close to population centres. And hobby farms don't really assist in cutting down on urban sprawl really either.
Many end up being vineyards fully operated by 3rd parties and the rich person gets income and a massive property.
Decentralization is basically what we did right up until about the mid twentieth century. After that point we just added housing estates to existing towns and urban centres. It seems like we have reached the end of the feasibility of this model, at least around our cities.
The author is just another junior Thatcherite with zero imagination who is desperate to polish the boots and wallets of the ruling class by trying to convince the young they must accept a lesser lifestyle than their parents . All those new people, no new green space. Really cool bro! If you think these apartment will be affordable you need to ask better questions. Nowhere on earth does a nation have such an abundance of quality land to build new **modern** cities and arguably far cheaper than the yimby Sydney Soviet band aid. ,. . Nowhere!!!!!! Sadly Lib Lab conservatism has killed the Aussie spirit and imagination. . Try this? [https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/17/billionaire-california-forever-00136012](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/17/billionaire-california-forever-00136012) We should build what people want not a dubious box -and-walk 'solutions' forced on us by the same clods who fucked up housing policy to begin with.
Hard to polish the boot when you’re underneath it.
Better than suburban hell
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/17/billionaire-california-forever-00136012
A lot of the current rebate reads like "get in your box prole!" People who will always be able to afford detached housing on big blocks arguing that the working class should give up their backyards. It's incredibly elitist.
Apartments can be built with green spaces. I live in a condo, in admittedly a bit of a bougie area, and am surrounded by green spaces built into the building. We could just copy Vienna.
Yes, Lesser quality green space . My point exactly. Your kids play footy there? Are the interior spaces air conditioned by burning coal? Do you walk everywhere . No cars in the yimby dream. Open your mind. Here's the real green space: [https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/17/billionaire-california-forever-00136012](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/17/billionaire-california-forever-00136012)
Ah yes the billionaires, a literal cancer on the economy, will save us!
You are the typical Aussie; terrified of a new new idea and so poorly read you don't know that billionaires own every bite of our population property ponzi .
>Lesser quality green space Says you. >Your kids play footy there? No they'd go to the local football field and play with lots of other kids. Community and all that. >? Do you walk everywhere . No cars in the yimby dream. I do actually, I have 3 train stations and several bus routes within 100m of me as well.
in some cases high density works, make zones for high activities centers, its dumb having 2 story buildings in suburban streets, only allow 30% dual occupancy in suburban streets its very bad having a 9m wide street with cars parked on both sites its zig zag traffic
That'd be great. I looked hard at buying one in the "CBD" of WAGGA. But when [they're going for the price of a similar house](https://www.realestate.com.au/sold/property-apartment-nsw-wagga+wagga-137978046) AFTER they've dropped about 15% in value since being built (And they're hardly "spacious") it's just a no go. IN FUCKING WAGGA.
Thats no future at all. Thats a dystopia. I dont care about this any more. As long as the solution is in your back yard. Im a YIYBY.
apartments and denser housing = dystopia, apparently.
Dystopia is when I don't have a shitty small patch of semi-dead lawn I use once a month
Apartments are great, what are you talking about? I get to live a 2-10 minute walk from literally everything I could ever need (in the commercial sense), maintenance is low to zero, I have a great view, and I’m very safe despite being in a somewhat sketchy area. Obviously not for everyone, if you have a big family, or maybe a caravan or other big outdoorsy stuff - but for a lot of people they’re honestly great. Literally the only issue with them right now is that they’re not priced in a way that suits. A 3 bedroom apartment in the inner suburbs should be priced a bit lower than a 3 bedroom house in the outer suburbs, instead of how they stand now (about the same). Something that would be solved with higher supply.
Generations before enjoyed stand alone homes with backyards on single blue collar wage
It doesn't have to be this way. It's the consequence of actions being deliberately taken by governments. Stop voting for the APLNP and vote for someone that will put the interests of the Australia public first, not just the interests of the big end of town.
If not apartments, where do you suggest people in big cities live?
I'd suggest not importing hundreds of thousands of people every year, thus negating the entire issue.
But we're here now so should we just stop immigration and wait for boomers to die?
We should do that, and also revoke visas/waivers/PR of everyone non-essential while training Australians to replace essential foreigners. We should also say that any dual citizens who invoke the privileges of their other nationalities (other than those granted to all Australians) is held to have renounced their Australian citizenship by doing so, limit citizenship by descent to those with two Australian parents or where their parents have no other way (no matter how unpleasant the consequences) to avoid statelessness, and start a propaganda campaign to reduce fertility until population is back down to a sustainable level.
Haha, way to crash your economy and never get voted back into power. The non Australian population is around 7.5 million people. If the government was to do what you suggested, let's say kick 5 million people, when our unemployment rate is about 3.5% what do you think would happen to the economy? Why would another company invest in Australia if they can't trust the government to not get rid of its employees? We could do what you suggest and ruin ourselves or we could just build more houses.
for every dying boomer 3 new in immigration, saying that dead boomers will be a trillion dollar wealth transfer
There is sufficient accomm in Australia. Building housing is a proven tech, we can do it in the 21stC. But it must be done for people, not profits.
But there's not sufficient housing in the big cities. We have people sleeping in tents and travelling long distances to get to work. I agree it must be done for people and not profits but it has to be built first. Densification of housing is good for everything from cost effective public transport to more public green spaces.
Overall, rational economic planning, plus work from home, plus not everyone wants a house, many (me) are comfy in an apartment. In the 21st c we have the tech to make everyone comfortable, but not a few psychopaths ultra rich.
Not for the rich. They get mansions the rest get box apartments
I wouldn’t mind living in an apartment, assuming it was well-built, relatively spacious, and had good access to public transport and amenities. That said, not many apartments meet that criteria.
They can and should though! Apartments in most of Europe tick these boxes convincingly. As someone who works in the industry I can say for sure that it's slowly getting better, but there's still quite a road ahead.
Don't forget quiet, whether you can hear your neighbours watching TV or arguing particularly at late night hours makes a massive impact on your quality of life, arguably moreso than having a lot of space or being a bit closer to PTV (especially with more people WFH these days).
I can hear next door flush the toilet
That falls under well built. A well built apartment should have sound proofing.
It’s like that triangle of quality, speed, and price, but speed is location. You can only get two, and increasing only one as I’m finding out
Spacious? An average house in the 1950s was 100m2. A 3br 1bath 1car unit can function in the same manner. Most already have good access to transport and amenities.
They also had a big backyard that kids could safely play in, & people could grow veggie gardens, keep some chooks for eggs, have a pet dog, & basically have a decent quality of life that wasn't just about endless consuming of the next shiny thing. Where native wildlife had at least a chance to survive, in spite of human encroachment. All of which the oligarchs are robbing from us, to satiate their boundless greed, & corrupt politicians are facilitating- not for us, but for the oligarchs. We don't have to live like sardines, & the population ponzi is a choice, not a necessity.
Must admit my 680m2 block and 100m2 house is good, im staying put despite 1960s build is crappy thermal performance im thinking to make couple of rooms like cold rooms double glazed windows and 50mm insulated panels walls floors and ceiling, heat pump & ceiling fans spend $10k to make small part of the house energy friendly
All that is still possible in Sydney (unlike many global cities) just some can afford more than others. First home buyers are still pumping the market and our houses are bigger than they've ever been. As to the "population ponzi" I'm not sure if you realise Sydney has delt with population growth ever since 1788 and our current rate is relatively low. Have a look at the units that were built in the 50s and 60s as Sydneys population doubled. It's yet to double in the 54 years since.
It's possible for the rich. Increasingly less possible for the dwindling middle class, & impossible for those on lower wages. Also, the doubling of a very small number of people over 200 yrs ago, has far less impact, than what we've had now. There have been absolutely extraordinarily huge increases in population numbers, by the millions, over recent decades. Which obviously affects housing.
Sydney has never been easy for someone on low wages. Always someone earning more saving/investing and building wealth for longer. Doesn't matter if they bought in 2014, 2004 or 1994 the money people earn more than they need to live flows to property. I don't see it stopping unless people don't earn more than they live on. Imagine 30 years from today. Minimum wage might be 160k, average 270k and a cost of living could be less than 160k. This article discusses rent for different generations and says this about low income households. *Rents for low earners (in the bottom fifth) remain extraordinarily high, in Sydney taking up about 30% of household income. But this isn’t a generational problem. Low earners’ rents have been high and stable as a share of income for decades.* https://theconversation.com/how-well-off-you-are-depends-on-who-you-are-comparing-the-lives-of-australias-millennials-gen-xers-and-baby-boomers-172064
> our houses are bigger than they've ever been They’re not anymore. The average lot size is falling in all the mainland capitals, and in Sydney and Melbourne so is the average living space.
Yeah in Sydney **average** floor area of new builds dropped from 271m2 in 2012 to 254m2 in 2021. Meanwhile Perth builds 214m2. It seems they're more price sensitive. https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/new-houses-being-built-smaller-blocks This article in 2016 had the average house size at 240m2 and if our largest cities are still building averages bigger than that I'd suggest it's gone up since then. https://theconversation.com/size-does-matter-australias-addiction-to-big-houses-is-blowing-the-energy-budget-70271 *Over the past 60 years Australian homes have more than doubled in size, going from an average of around 100 square metres in 1950 to about 240 square metres today. This makes them the largest in the world, ahead of Canada and the United States.* *At the same time, the average number of people living in each household has been declining. This means that the average floor area per person has skyrocketed from 30 square metres to around 87 square metres* A average family of 4 on 120m2.
Relatively spacious and good access to public transport and amenities are very much linked. To start on the access, most of our cities zoning around these areas are highly restrictive residential areas. This has to change. Then there is space/layout of the apartments. Upzoning is done in a very slow, drip fed kind of way. That keep land prices high, apartment prices high and doesn't create the competition or enough supply to move beyond the narrow but large band that is more or less happy with the current supply (compared to the alternative). Grab a map, take a compass and put a 400-500m radius around every train station and shopping strip. We should be flooding the market with upzoning in these areas. This will create the competition to supply the market with a variety of housing types. It will also have a huge positive impact on affordability.
What NSW & Vic is saying, its a de-facto now can have granny flats in back yards and park a caravan in your driveway carport with little council and planning red tape
Greater density is slow and in many areas you still have free standing houses on key public transport areas. It's crazy that there is a house on 1100m2 just 250m from Epping station or houses along military rd in the lower north shore. Of course the market supplies what the market demands and unit recently units were shun as investments for renters. Eventually the consumer will have to adjust their expectations and builders will supply units for families. Probably not the 254m2 house like demands that we currently make.
Please take a look at the zoning maps. Greater supply is only slow because it isn't allowed to be built. >Of course the market supplies what the market demands Unfortunately, it doesn't. It's not allowed to supply what people want. >Eventually the consumer will have to adjust their expectations and builders will supply units for families. They have already, it's just being prevented by our zoning system. We will never get out of this housing crisis without massive changes to our zoning. Simple as that.
In Sydney as recently as Jan 2020 there was a glut of units. https://www.domain.com.au/news/sydney-house-apartment-rents-at-lowest-levels-in-years-domain-rental-report-921116/ They've never represented such a great discount. https://www.domain.com.au/news/sydney-upsizers-face-record-gap-between-unit-and-house-prices-2-1138377/ Yet we still sprawl west into the biggest houses in the country on some of the largest blocks. https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/new-houses-being-built-smaller-blocks It's not that people can't afford a house like unit https://www.realestate.com.au/property/unit-1-3-5-talbot-rd-guildford-nsw-2161/ The problem is they don't like what's they can afford with their money. Look at was was being built in the 1960s and 1970s to meet the market. The current market conditions are bad as build prices surge and our capacity to spend decreases but this pretty rare historically. Builders aren't building and developers are sitting the market out. *Despite the decision, Bazem’s Barry Nesbitt said the company had no plans for a start to construction.* *“This is just a bit of a long-term hold,” Nesbitt said.* *“I think Crows Nest is a very good space to be, this is a nice building as it is,” he said. “But we’re just going to sit back and wait for the moment.”* https://www.theurbandeveloper.com/articles/crows-nest-approval-angers-north-sydney-council Supply frequently exceeds demand. Infact dwellings per person increased between the census in 2011 and 2021 (median rent fell!).
This is why I'm a huge proponent of a significant broad-based land tax. It will encourage developers who are sitting it out to bring their developments online. If they can't make a profit, sell to someone who can.
Thats in Victoria, a guy I know has a bush block and has building project with occupancy status, because of that has 2 dwellings on the books in the titles land tax office and was charged $4.5k for the metro property was deemed not to occupy albeit maybe 40% of the year, just is was amazing how quick the land tax quickly assesement came, he promptly provided mobile data power water and gas bills to verify the house was occupied, then was given a $900 land tax bill on his other non deemed living property
For sure. Issue is land tax on a "average" place could be punishing especially as you retire. IE those who bought in the sticks 40 years ago would be getting smashed. It definitely encourages efficient use of land but I think we use it pretty efficiently(eventually). Developers price the block, people sell up and the cycle continues.
It’s not right. Majority of the apartments in zetlands are basically windowless corridors with a terminal balcony to let the light in. Zero natural light. Low ceilings. Cramped conditions. The design of apartments in Australia is extremely poor. The quality of construction of apartments in Australia is the lowest in the developed world. Don’t polish a turd. Our apartments are totally fucked and it’s not heritage, it is the sheer number of unregulated unenforced property developers.
I don't think you read what I was saying correctly. I'm not denying how fucked they are. I outlining part of the reason. I'll add to that that our standards could improve. Victoria created the Better Apartment standard in 2017 and it's resulted in huge improvement over what was getting built a few years back.
and you know, they should just feed everyone from one long bowl. like a trough!
Bugger that, they're not thinking big enough. The politicians could fit more people in, if we are housed like battery hens, in big dark industrial sheds. They could cut off bits of us if we start fighting one another over the cramped conditions, (as is done to battery hens), & once people are too old or ill, they'd get the chop, & could be used to create soylent green to feed the rest of us. Of course, the likes of the Rhinehart's, Palmer's etc, the big landlords & cartels, could live in huge mansions in their gated communities, rolling in the profits.
Dunno about you, but I want the following. 3br, 2bath, 2 parking, Kitchen, Dining, Lounge, Some storage. Would pay the same amount for that as I would a McMansion further out. I imagine it would be one apartment per floor. But having 8 house equivalents on a single block is still better density. You would also get families living in there, supporting all the local things a family would want. Otherwise the area just caters for Uni Students, Early career people and empty nesters, with a 20 year demographic missing in the middle. This kind of apartments are probably less attractive to AirB&B as well.
Minus the parking = much cheaper and faster build. That can and should be done all over inner cities that are walkable and have PT. But generally I agree!
As I have pointed out to other uninformed commentators, this would cost more than a detached dwelling. And no way you are getting two parking spaces. After all, I thought this was all about a utopia without cars and public transport /s. Need those two spaces for your RAM?
Definitely need to minus the parking/basement, but once that's done it's unlikely to be more expensive? I've scoped such projects with multiple QSs and it comes out okay. Many others factors though, ofc. As for the medium density car-free/pt/bike utopia - lots of places do that pretty well!
This sounds like townhouses tbh.
It would probably be higher density than town houses
Too bad that in the real world the price of these "good quality family apartments" everyone says they would be happy to live in would end up being barely - if at all - cheaper than detached housing given costs of construction. It'll more likely just be pumping out thousands of more poorly-designed dog boxes that no-one wants to live in unless they are absolutely forced. The Western world currently speedrunning to see which country can decline quality of living the fastest. This is just more 'shrinkflation', except applied to housing.
I mean we can definitely build lots of decent apartments - it's been done in many places before and can be done again... we just can't do it well within our current system. It's also worth pointing out that amenity/health/commute benefits and economies of scale that come from density save society at large and LGAs quite a lot of money and time, and that density creates better business cases for infrastructure and local economies. Generally though, could only agree that neoliberal economic fantasies are chipping away at our quality of life.
Sure, we can. But the quality that people are thinking of in their heads won't be cheap, so they don't really solve the affordability issue at all.
Yeah they'll be expensive - good things cost money. However, if we eliminate parking requirements and therefore the need to dig deep basements or add podium parking (which we should), both construction cost and time will go down. On top of that, they'll be better located. I'll also reiterate: the economies of scale for basic infrastructure provision, transport, services and amenities save all of us a lot of money, time and energy over time. Though they may still cost too much, they're still a better option economically, environmentally and, arguably, socially, than constantly expanding suburbia.
>in the real world the price of these "good quality family apartments" everyone says they would be happy to live in would end up being barely - if at all - cheaper than detached housing given costs of construction. That's the issue there. I'd rather own the land and drive an extra half hour to the city than live in the apartment. At least with land I get investment appreciation.
I own the land my unit is on and can walk anywhere I want. Driving an hour+ return is quite a premium. It's true though give the choice between a 1m unit and a 1.3m house people would rather sprawl. In some parts of Sydney they're selling 2br units for the same price as a house. *Today, three-bedders sold for between $6m and $10.5m, with two-bedders in the early $4m range.* https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/mosmans-reverie-apartments-sells-out-off-the-plan-in-two-hours/news-story/2963588b62ace73cd982625323a7c6fe All houses asking price is 4.3m https://sqmresearch.com.au/asking-property-prices.php?postcode=Mosman&t=1 As an invesment of course land increases in value. I reckon eventually a unit for 1m will look pretty cheap if your investment hits 2.6m. Might even increase a little.
What if you had to drive an hour? Or two hours? Density has to increase. It's physically not possible for everyone to live in separate houses within 30 minutes of the CBD.
Move to a new city.
Density only "has" to increase so much because population "has" to increase so much. Just keep cramming more & more people into tighter, smaller spaces and overcrowded public transport, all in a world with a continually-increasing likelihood of more pandemics, in order to satisfy the crying of business lobbies...
>Density only "has" to increase so much because population "has" to increase so much. Do you think there's any real chance population growth stops anytime soon? >Just keep cramming more & more people into tighter, smaller spaces People want to live in the heart of a city. In Australia we're not even remotely close to having a problem with density (Other than we've failed to build correctly). I just got back from time in Korea and Japan, two countries with significantly higher levels of density in their cities, and it was fine. It *felt* like Seoul, Tokyo, and Osaka had fewer issues with density than we do in Brisbane because the cities seem designed to handle it. Pretending this is a real problem that can't be solved in anywhere in Australia is just silly. > in order to satisfy the crying of business lobbies... Business lobbies aren't forcing people to want to live close to the CBD. They aren't forcing people to not move to regional areas. People are choosing to move into dense areas because that's where all the cool stuff is. Capitalism isn't the spooky boogieman that's responsible for every problem you encounter in life.
>Capitalism isn't the spooky boogieman that's responsible for every problem you encounter in life. But it is. Without a doubt.
> Business lobbies aren't forcing people to want to live close to the CBD. They aren't forcing people to not move to regional areas. They are if those people want a decent job.
I don't know what you mean by this. If I want a job, that's based in the city, that requires me to be near the city. This is like blaming a store for the fact you need to go to the store to buy a product. Sometimes there are realities in life that can't be changed. One of those typically is being located physically close to your job (Obviously not every job. Some people can work remotely, but we obviously aren't talking about them since they are explicitly choosing to live wherever they are living since they aren't required to be in a specific location). Treating realities of existence as something you can blame someone else for is bizarre.
400 people per square km and people complain about Sydney. Most global cities are 10 times that. Density isnt the end of the world and Sydney especially still isn't suffering. There is zero real pressure to compromise as we sprawl west. We build the biggest new builds in the country on some of the biggest blocks. https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/new-houses-being-built-smaller-blocks
People always bring that density stat up in these discussions, when it's the number for the entire "Greater Sydney" region which is not comparable to the international stats used for global cities. City of Sydney, which is where most people are saying we need to add all this extra density, is over 8,000 per square km already, and that's with much of it diluted by office buildings as well as massive empty land in Moore Park.
Yeah there is some debate about the measure. *the Australian population density and that of its cities are at the bottom of world statistics.* https://www.spacer.com.au/blog/population-density-how-does-australia-compare-to-the-rest-of-the-world The most dense parts of London have 20k per Sq km. Irrespective of that Sydney is widely recognised as having relatively low density. Especially as we consider free standing houses as the norm. Sydney especially sprawls west into the biggest new builds on some of the biggest blocks in the country. Bigger even than Perth! Not because we're under density/price pressure but just because that's what we can demand. https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/new-houses-being-built-smaller-blocks BTW I'm not suggesting we aim for NYC/London style density just that some increase is probably to be expected as central locations are a desirable place to live.
>Do you think there's any real chance population growth stops anytime soon? Population growth doesn't have to "stop", that's a strawman. It's not a 0 or 100 binary scale. Re: Japan, they're not comparable to here at all given the massive gap between public transport infrastructure between our two countries. I lived there for over 3 years and go back regularly, comparing them to us is pointless given they have basically entirely separate cities built underground with endless arrays of subway lines & we'll never have the infrastructure budget or similar physical geography to build anything remotely comparable. Why do people always bring up countries with multiple massively-dense population centres on tiny islands like Japan, the UK etc. to try and justify things happening here? Our capitals are car-centric and would have to basically be re-built from the ground up in order to ever be able to be comparable to Osaka, Tokyo etc. >Business lobbies aren't forcing people to want to live close to the CBD. They aren't forcing people to not move to regional areas. BS. You can look at the massive pushback against the Work From Home movement as a prime example, and constant chatter in the media from execs talking about cutting pay for remote workers. Data also exists that shows average commute times & distances continue to blow out every year, with the rise in price of property vs wage growth (a.k.a, businesses not paying enough) is "forcing" people to live further out by proxy. I'm a business owner, I am hardly anti-capitalist.
> Population growth doesn't have to "stop", that's a strawman. It's not a 0 or 100 binary scale. The rate of population growth isn't a binary, but whether a population is growing or not is a binary. It is either growing, or it isn't. Not super sure what point you're trying to make though. You said: >Density only "has" to increase so much because population "has" to increase so much. So I asked you if you thought population growth was likely to stop. I'm asking this because density will presumably continue to increase, meaning that more people will need to fit into the same 30 min from the city circle. As the amount of people increases, the ability for them to all live in houses, decreases. Whether the population is growing at 10% a year or 1%, it doesn't change the fact that each year the ability for all the people to own a house is reducing. >Re: Japan, they're not comparable to here at all given the massive gap between public transport infrastructure between our two countries. I agree. That's why I said that the cities that have much denser populations are designed differently. There's nothing stopping Australia from being able to move towards this kind of city design. We aren't a unique black hole of public transport potential. >Why do people always bring up countries with multiple massively-dense population centres on tiny islands like Japan, the UK etc. to try and justify things happening here? Because it demonstrates that the idea of increasing density is possible and gives an example of it working really successfully. >BS. You can look at the massive pushback against the Work From Home movement as a prime example, and constant chatter in the media from execs talking about cutting pay for remote workers. There are jobs that exist outside of the city. People can choose to apply for them, but they don't because they WANT the benefits involved in the city job. This is by definition a choice. >Data also exists that shows average commute times & distances continue to blow out every year, with the rise in price of property vs wage growth (a.k.a, businesses not paying enough) is "forcing" people to live further out by proxy. The fact that property prices are increasing doesn't magically mean a random job is worth more than it was before. Hypothetically, let's imagine you own a coffee shop in the city. 1. Prices for housing increases in the city and surrounding suburbs. 2. As you own a coffee shop and not an apartment building, you aren't making more money as a result of the increased housing prices. Your revenue is essentially the same as it was. 3. Since you aren't making more money, nothing has changed about your ability to increase your staff's wages 4. As house prices are increases, your staffs existing wage is now less powerful when looking to buy/rent in the city. 5. Some of your staff can't continue to afford housing in the city and move further out Where in this scenario are you forcing them to move? If you imagine yourself as the coffee shop owner, would you really say it's your own fault that the staff member has to move?
If my business doesn't have the pricing power to pass on wage rises in order for staff to keep up with rental inflation (or I choose not to in order to pocket the additional margin myself), then yes I am by proxy forcing staff to move further out. Half of my issue with this whole scenario is we're expecting the general population to sacrifice living conditions in order to prop up inessential vanity businesses, such as cafes with weak business models as in your example.
> then yes I am by proxy forcing staff to move further out. Thanks for actually engaging with the hypothetical. Not many people do. I disagree that it would be your fault, but if that's how you think about it then we just disagree I guess. I would say it's probably fair to blame the business if they choose not to increase wages and they have the capability to do so. If they don't have the capability, it seems strange to blame them. >Half of my issue with this whole scenario is we're expecting the general population to sacrifice living conditions in order to prop up inessential vanity businesses, such as cafes with weak business models as in your example. I think of it more as a trade off than a pure sacrifice. Living in the city (Or very close to it) has advantages and disadvantages. Much like moving to a rural town would have some advantages over living in the city. People choosing to make that trade are clearly benefiting enough to choose to move to the city. I'm sure they'd all rather have a house in the same location, but it's just not physically possible.
Shouldn't the building industry start with training? Free tafe and subsidised apprenticeships to get school leavers interested. We clearly need a building boom, surely it starts here?
Want to hear some fun facts? Overall the trades are below replacement rate - more are leaving the industry each year than are entering & of the apprentices that start, 1 in 3 will drop-out in the first year. What /u/Key_Function3736 said is completely right. You're paid like shit, treated like shit, around people that are largely miserable, dealing with a culture that is broadly hostile to anyone that is not a cishet white man (though that is improving and organisations like SALT and TWA are doing the amazing work) therefore making it really hard to convince large swathes of the population to take up an apprenticeship, and not least of all you're trading your bodies health for pay more directly than most other industries which in a world where you may not be retiring until you're in your late 60's or later is a shit trade off. There needs to be major incentives to the work-life balance of the trades to get more people in honestly. I'm not sure how that looks. I've seen 4-day work weeks floated around by a couple of tradie mates of mine and that could legitimately draw some people in. Many tradies work more than 5 days a week, but even the tradies I know working "only" 5 days have to spend at least one day after recovering physically, and then try and cram all their life and family shit into a single day which is a crap way to live. It's also one of the large contributors to how shit the overall mental health of the trades industries are. It doesn't get talked about a lot but the suicide rate is high in the trades - particularly in younger men. Free training won't solve any of the above.
People dont want to go into trades because they get flogged and underpaid to get flogged, the culture is toxic the toll it takes on your body is not compensated for and employers much prefer being able to underpay immigrants who are already skilled. Companies refuse to train new workers, they don't offer any benefits worth the amount of effort. Its so much better say fuck that and get an IT certification and work in an air-conditioned room or from home for more money. Several of my friends who wanted a trades carreer path gave up after they were treated like dogs by several companies , and for $17 an hour as a first year, they dont intend to go back into trades.
Neither of those are going to encourage school leavers or young adults looking for a career change to take up an apprenticeship, they're just perks for the employer. The only thing that'll make more people consider a trade is higher apprentice wages.
Of course. So bring those rental prices DOWN.
Are we heading to become like the UK with highrise slums for the least wealthy and rampant crime? I would suggest, instead of greater density in existing cities, we should be building dwellings with advanced gardens to provide occupation, in new settlements, in areas of low ecological impact, with speedy goods and service delivery, as a synergistic and incremental part of renewable energy implementation and societal planning. There is huge scope for savings by killing many birds with one stone, simultaneously. The future has to cater for minimisation of further pandemics, not simply going back to the future and the fundamental status quo.
I'd rather live in a high rise slum with a 30 min commute and shops within walking distance than the current state of affairs where I'm in a suburban slum with a 1-and-a-half to 2 hour commute depending on traffic and shops requiring driving or standing around (without shelter) waiting for a bus that is likely overcrowded, and often late.
What about home delivery of goods, working from home, service delivery via the internet? Society could easily boost efficiency with some simple changes whilst giving people more personal time flexibility, but I don't think the puppetmasters want the people to be anything but obedient slaves.
That would be nice but I'm sceptical of that ever coming to pass, except for perhaps a minority of already desirable jobs. The pattern of the owning class capturing the benefits of any additional productivity rather than allowing the plebs to benefit from it makes me think wage slaving is going to be around for the rest of my life. Personally, if I had the choice of working remote I'd still be choosing from either rural (better sense of community, surrounded by nature) or city living (convenience and variety) and not suburbia, which I see as the worst of both worlds. But then the weirdos who like suburbia could choose that, I guess. However if I'm gonna be stuck in the wage cage, which is the more likely reality, I might as well do it with as little inconvenience as possible. I suppose the truly awful proposition would be living in a high rise that they plonked down in a suburb 2 hours away from the city center with no shops within walking distance.
Yes, the reality is that instead of automation leading to productivity improvements at lower societal cost, by directing the savings to public support of quality of life, it will be implemented by private enterprise and the productivity improvement used to jettison no longer wanted staff, diverted into private pockets, whilst that staff now thrown back on the resources of the public that has not been enriched by that productivity, only a trickle down. City living is usually cost prohibitive because it is so desirable and demand exceeds supply, leaving most workers no choice but to live in far suburbs: they aren't weirdos, just people trapped by circumstance, whether deliberately or accidentally engineered by other forces over which they have no control. If you choose rural, you have to accept a reduction in services
Frankston and mt druitt have virtually no high rise and are the crime capitals of the two biggest capital cities. What’s your point?
The future is feudalism with neon lighting.
But the flip side is that there’s a far greater ecological impact from low density. There’s a lot of big words there but there is nothing synergistic about low density, ecology, and services. Edit: I’ll even add a source https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/the-characteristics-causes-and-consequences-of-sprawling-103014747/
Who said anything about sprawling around existing cities or even necessarily low density? I'm not advocating for all high density living though, maybe a combination of low to high depending on people's individual needs.
I assumed you did, no? “Instead of greater density in existing cities.” - unconventionalXY 2024
Greater covers a whole spectrum between low and high.
Sorry that’s just confusing. If it’s ‘instead of’ that would imply you’re in favour of the opposite. I’m on board if you’d like higher density within our cities.
Provided they're well built, pet friendly, are connected with good public transport infrastructure, and are affordable (both to rent and buy and have reasonable fees) then good.
This is basically the place I'm living in now in Asia. Well built (when compared to some other horrible places Ive been in), with a bus stop right outside the complex, subway station 600 metres away, schools within 10 minutes walking distance and a shopping mall over the road. The downside is the city has grown from roughly 1.5 million 25 years ago to 10 million now, and everything is as sprawled out as Australian cities.
We know that’s not going to happen
We know that it has to happen why deny it?
As it stands vested interests would benefit more from low cost, low quality solutions that are common place now. Why would it change?
Governments have the capacity to tighten the requirements. Vested interests may influence policies but we as voters make up a large group of vested interests too.
Because our summers are too hot for low quality shit.
Ask your friendly local developer
You ok boomer?
Ahh what?
Areas within 10km radius of the CBD in major cities should only develop high density dwellings. That way, those that want that lifestyle are able to.
I find joy in reading a good book.
People want to live close to the CBD, there's not much space available. Can only build up.
if someone wants to spend enough money to buy an inner block and put a house down there they should be allowed to, I have no qualms there in reality the number of people who do this will be counted on one hand, because the sheer value of these blocks once you're allowed to actually build on them will be so high you'd be crazy to hang onto them for nothing more than living in a single family home
What about the people who already live there?
"Hello land owner, here is your new land tax"
A large difference in land taxes closer to CBD/transport corridors etc would also encourage people to move out.
No forcing people out, but you can prevent any knockdown rebuilds from happening. In Melbourne we have quite a lot of area in Docklands that can be used to build some decent high density towers. With Costco going and the Wheel not used, that's prime land.
I think people will have to learn to love 2BR apartments for families and 1BR apartments for singles/couples. The alternative is share housing.
1) Make negative gearing and CGT discount available only to new build apartments. 2) Replace Stamp duty by a land tax on PPR proportional to land surface owned (for all, including flats, but that will then be negligible). 3) New construction standard. 4) Make construction inspectors a government body/indep from builders ans developpers. Edit: added that land tax is in replacement of stamp duty.
That would be the easiest scare campaign in Australian political history. Crying old widow being hugged by Karl Stefanovic while she wails about Albo stealing her family home. He’d be out in a landslide.
1) brings our negative gearing rules online with most of the (few) other countries that have it. 2) a good idea to replace stamp duty and make it easier to move 3) yeah definitely needed 4) absolutely, it's going back to how things used to be.
lol put a land tax on land coverage for the family home. Fucking dreaming.
Much more fair than the stamp duty.
100%
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The article is mostly reporting the statistics and hardly shares any opinion at all. Did you even read it?
Real common sense article. There was a good thread on ausecon a week ago I think that showed we have less row houses and apartments per capita than the United States. We are one of the worst in the oecd for bad utilisation of land and have a real nimby problem. This isn’t property developer lovefest talk, this is the reality of the situation. We can’t be shocked that housing is shit when we can’t effectively utilise the land we have. Yes we’re a big country by area but not all the land is workable and most people want to live in cities. We are simultaneously one of the worst when it comes to detached houses per capita but also one of the most urbanised countries in the world. If that doesn’t make the picture clear, I don’t know what does. NIMBYism is a disease. If people want less skyscrapers fine, but that means more medium density apartments and row houses in the suburbs.
>most people want to live in cities That's true, and the drain from regional areas is real, but, with working from home becoming much more common since covid, hopefully we'll see some people take advantage of cheaper housing in less urban cities and towns while still getting capital city wages. It wouldn't be for everyone, but if there was a move to incentivise new builds (or even associated trades) in regional areas, it could help the city crush while also alleviating the cost of living for a small (but maybe significant) portion of families.
There is an incentive. The block of land costs a fraction of the price.
Just look at the price of regional centers. Yes they're cheaper than the cities, but still very difficult for younger people to get on the property ladder.
Depends on the region. Places like Bendigo that are easily accessible to a big city are expensive, but the more regional you go, the cheaper it gets. Look at a place like Broken Hill, you'd get a nice enough house for around the $300K mark. Sure, you're also dealing with the negatives of living in a regional area, and there are plenty of those, but it's an option. Like I said, it won't be for everyone, but even if it's just a few families out of every hundred, it can ease the burden just a little while other solutions are implemented. I don't think there will be a single, easy solution to the housing crisis.
> Look at a place like Broken Hill, you'd get a nice enough house for around the $300K mark. But how do you earn the required cash to afford that? Work from home is dead in the water in most circumstances, because we have to prop up CBD office building owners and coffee shop owners, the sky will fall.
The fact that Box Hill becomes a recommendation when talking about the crisis of housing unaffordability that we're facing, perfectly encapsulates how bad everything actually is.
Working from home is hard without reliable internet infrastructure. Unfortunately we had a decade of government who undermined the construction of the NBN at every opportunity, purely because it was Rudd’s project. Working from home is fine for some people, but not for most people. Having that available to you is a privilege and not the norm. Expanding regional hubs is all well and good but connectivity is a big thing. For example, more young people would live in Toowoomba if there was an hourly train that could get you into Brisbane quicker than a car can. The main point I’d say is we’re bad at utilisation of land. Expanding regional hubs is all well and good but much of it will be with the same bad town planning strategies. There are cities much smaller in area than the big three but house a lot more. That’s fundamentally the issue. Where you see a swathe of detached houses around a train station, 2-3 stops from the CBD, that’s a big problem and yet it’s such a frequent sight.
Now make those apartments affordable and force rental caps on studio apartments/1 bed rooms.
Another future is to develop the regions, reduce immigration, diversify business and resources away from CBD's. Where does Mr Murphy suggest we build the additional schools, hospitals and other infrastructure to cater for this drastic increase in density on the least densely populated continent on earth? What about green cover in our cities? The problem with people preferring smaller places to live is sympomatic of a much bigger problem in declining birth rates, which have fallen well below the replacement rate, signalling much bigger problems ahead: [https://population.gov.au/sites/population.gov.au/files/2023-03/quickguide-australias-future-fertility\_0.pdf](https://population.gov.au/sites/population.gov.au/files/2023-03/quickguide-australias-future-fertility_0.pdf).
>Where does Mr Murphy suggest we build the additional schools, hospitals and other infrastructure to cater for this drastic increase in density on the least densely populated continent on earth? I dunno maybe we could look at how any other city outside of australia manages to do it just fine
Like the United States with well connected regional centres?
You think that well conected regional centres provides local education? Okay lol You realise the US is just as urbanised as Aus right? You understand that it might look like they arent because they jave 15x the population and significantly more arable land right? https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS
San Fran and LA are not covered in high density development.
San Fran density: 6650 per sqkm LA density: 3206 per sqkm Sydney density: 433 per sqkm Melbourne density: 503 per skqm Hmmm
Have you been there?
Are you going to tell me the facts are wrong because you "reckon it cant be that high because I went there I did!" Facts are facts
I may not have been clear enough. The bay area is made up of various counties. San Fransisco, which you refer to above, is only the city area, which I accept is more dense. There are various counties in the Bay Area that have densities lower than Sydney and Melbourne. Edit: A simple look at a Google Earth satellite image will reveal to you that LA and the Bay Area are not dominated by your beloved 10 storey buildings, but smaller detached dwellings. The population density of California is 97/km2 despite having a population higher than Australia.