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Why Australia has world's most expensive houses
November 13, 2007
Australia is now a world leader in unaffordable housing - and none of the major parties are tackling the core reasons. Ben Schneiders reveals how other countries deal with the housing dilemma.
JODIE Koch has made a decision. She'll skip the mortgage, opt out of the housing market and rent for now.
Koch, 32, is not a struggling average earner. She has a professional job in marketing, earns an above-average income and has a budget of $350,000. Yet she cannot afford the two-bedroom flat she wants.
As recently as seven years ago, Koch's budget would have bought her two median-priced, two-bedroom flats in East St Kilda, where she lives and would like to buy. Today, her budget doesn't even buy her one flat, with the average apartment in inner Melbourne now selling for more than $400,000.
"The market has just gone far too high, even if the market stabilises now it's still above my limit," Koch says.
There has been extensive coverage of rocketing prices in Melbourne and Australia, and it appears there is something to complain about. Prices in Melbourne have more than doubled in a decade. And interest rates in Australia are now the sixth-highest in the OECD. They are higher than in Britain, US and most of the EU. If Ms Koch lived in many parts of the US she could expect to pay half as much for a house or apartment, when compared to her income, as she would here. Even in Britain, with the exception of places such as London, she would pay a smaller share of her income to buy.
A survey by consultants Demographia released this year found that Australians paid 6.6 times the median household income for a median-priced home. In New Zealand, Ireland and Britain a median-priced home cost between 5.5 and six times the median yearly household income. In the US and Canada it was between three and four times. An affordable market is regarded as about three times income.
Economists point out that the past decade has seen affordability decline in most of the developed world. One reason is a sustained worldwide economic expansion, says ANZ chief economist Saul Eslake. "We are living in what is the strongest period in above-trend growth the world has seen for 30 years," he says.
Growth, combined with steep falls in interest rates in the 1990s and easier access to finance, has meant a surge in house prices. Yet despite this worldwide trend, things are worse in Australia. Experts point to a number of reasons.
One that neither major party wants to tackle are the generous tax concessions to investors, such as negative gearing and the capital gains tax cuts, which housing experts say encourage speculation rather than long-term investment.
Many comparable countries have tax incentives for landlords, but the incentives require an outcome — whether it is cheap rent, quality of stock, that the property be available for long-term rent, or environmental sustainability.
In the US, most housing policy is done at a local level, with the planning system often used to encourage affordable development. But the US Federal Government also plays a role and since 1934 has guaranteed mortgages at low cost.
In Britain, local government sets targets so that a portion of development is affordable, something that is uncommon here. That allows councils to negotiate with developers to enable projects to include an affordable element depending on the size of the development and its location.
In Australia, investment in housing — helped by the tax incentives — is dominated by a small landlord class that is largely unique to this country, and the side effect is the absence of large institutional investors in rental housing. Bigger investors could provide stability of ownership, targeted projects and allow longer-term tenure.
Another issue rarely discussed is immigration. Australia, for its population size, has one of the largest immigration programs in the world, adding to demand for housing. Combined with a development sector that is not building enough houses — the sector says this is due to excessive taxes and charges as well as restrictive land release policies — there is now a fear that the lack of building is creating housing shortages.
Australia's policies on public or subsidised housing also lag behind comparable countries. The average amount of social housing for the OECD countries is about 15 per cent, says Swinburne University's Terry Burke. Australia has around 5 per cent.
Countries such as Sweden and the Netherlands have up to 40 per cent of their housing stock held in a combination of public and private models. The Dutch and Swedish approaches do not favour ownership over renting, says Burke. "They have a tenure-neutral policy, which is to provide assistance to any tenure that fits their lifestyle, whereas we have been obsessed with home ownership as the one appropriate tenure."
Even tenancy advocates admit that the mood is not right here for a European-style model, yet declining levels of affordability are forcing people into renting for much longer than previous generations.
"We are going to have a lot more Australians living in private rental," says Burke.
"So we are going to have to have a lot more policy shaping for the rental sector."
There are other issues which are particular to Australia. Here the pressure for houses is concentrated in a handful of cities, which pushes up prices. In Europe and the US there are many more mid-size cities where people can live, work and raise a family.
Professor Julian Disney, who chairs a coalition representing the disparate interests of the Housing Industry Association, the ACTU and the Australian Council of Social Service, says that encouraging decentralisation and regional development is an idea seldom mentioned today. Such policies are difficult politically as their dividends are reaped well into the future.
Saul Eslake does not feel there will be an improvement any time soon — short of an economic downturn that pushes prices lower. He suspects there is not much political will to tackle the problem: few of the 70 per cent of the population that owns a house or has a mortgage would look kindly upon any political party moving to push down prices.
With CLAY LUCAS
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