Position of Moderator

[IQS.RLOW]

The only ones I ignore are the whinebot ones

There ya go skip. Problem solved as soon as you figure out how not to be a whiny little bitch...

[skippy]

That was aimed at boxy, skippy.

Oh, well in a way boxy has a right to be a bit put out. I don't think boxy did as bad a job as you thought monk, the reason I voted for aussie is that I thought aussie got ripped off last year. My only problem with boxy is that he doesn't answer his PMs.

What PMs? I don't remember you ever PMing me.

The only ones I ignore are the whinebot ones, and that's only after I've already answered them many times before.

I've only sent you two, both last week to the admin PM box. It doesn't matter now, I fucked up my email address here and had to re register, I was concerned you may not have accepted my vote as I'd only just joined last week with a new account.

[IQS.RLOW]

I also dispute it was your line,NOIQ, from my recollections, that is a deepy saying.

Your memory has more holes than a kitchen sponge

[Jovial Monk]

Wow, I use the table of one thing ONCE and IQ accuses me of being as unintelligent as him?

boxy, this place can be made more attractive, I gave some good ways. I got told I whine. So you you are partly the reason you lost the election.

I know Aussie is not that trustworthy, but we can keep him on the straight and narrow for quite a while, given the promises he given.

[Jovial Monk]

This is a post from my “twitter board:”

The buyers strike organised by GetUp! is beginning to attract media attention.http://suggest.getup.org.au/forums/6081 ... ?ref=title

Who knows if it will be successful or not but the fact that such such a thing has even come into existence tells you something about general affordability. News.com....

Prosper Australia push for first home buyers' 'strike' growing

Campaigners say first home buyers would be foolish to take out the huge loans now required to enter the property market. Source: Supplied
Group says property bubble burst imminent
Says first home buyers should stand aside
Gains support from online community

A CAMPAIGN urging first home buyers to take part in a "buyer's strike'' in an effort to drive down property prices is gaining momentum online.

Prosper Australia, a tax reform lobby group, say the property bubble burst is imminent and first home buyers should stand aside because they will be the worst impacted when property prices fall.

Spokesman David Collyer said first home buyers would face financial ruin when their house prices fell below their debt.

"The problem is that prices have got so far that two solid jobs and a good deposit is no longer enough to buy a house in Melbourne,'' he said.

He said the entire property market relied on first home buyers so that sellers could cash out and buy superior properties.

"Without FHBs, second home buyers cannot trade up. The whole juggernaut grids to a halt and if they choose not to buy at these outrageous prices, the market will correct itself,'' he said.

Prosper has been backed by Steve Keens, an associate economics professor at the University of Western Sydney, who said first home buyers would be foolish to take out the huge loans now required to enter the property market.

The campaign is gaining traction online with almost 5000 votes of support in just a few days on community advocacy site GetUp.

It is also the subject of discussion on social networking site Twitter.

Prosper is encouraging first home buyers to visit their campaign on the site and pledge to abstain from the market.

Mr Collyer said real estate prices in the US were still dropping five years after the property bubble burst.

"People should not underestimate the significance of what is about to unfold and we think it will unfold very soon,'' he said.

http://www.news.com.au/money/property/f ... 6030981788

Real Eastate Institute of Victoria is obviously concerned about the effect of the negative press, it has released a video assuring people that it will never work to bring prices down, while at the same time admitting that affordability is an issue...........

http://media.theage.com.au/property/dom ... 60002.html

Meanwhile, Saul Eslake attacks the idea of the first home buyers grant, more or less agreeing with Steve Keen that it is really just a grant to enrich vendors and push up prices...

Governments have thus been providing cash handouts to first-time home buyers for almost half a century. Yet, strikingly, the home ownership rate has never been higher than the 72 per cent recorded at the time of the 1961 census, three years before the first of these schemes began. At every census since then, it has fluctuated between a low of 68 per cent (in 1976) and 72 per cent (in 1971). At the past two censuses (in 2001 and 2006), it stood at 70 per cent.

Indeed, the apparent stability of the overall home ownership rate conceals a substantial decline in home ownership rates among every age group below 50…

And it’s pretty obvious why. Cash grants and other forms of help to first-time home buyers have served simply to exacerbate the imbalance between the underlying demand for housing and the supply of it…

Cash handouts for first home buyers have simply added to upward pressure on housing prices, enriching vendors (and making those who already have housing feel richer) while doing precisely nothing to help young people into home ownership…

Policies which have, in effect, added only to the demand for housing (or, more strictly, increased the amount which people can afford to pay for housing), have conspicuously failed.

Why, then, have governments persisted with policies that have so miserably failed to meet their ostensible goals? The answer is, surely, that since about 70 per cent of Australians live in homes that they (or members of their immediate family) already own, policies that make them feel richer are much more popular than policies that might allow the small minority of Australians who don’t own their own home, but would like to, to join them.

If governments really wanted to do something about housing affordability, they would abolish cash grants to first home buyers, and ”quarantine” tax deductions for interest paid by landlords to the value of the rent received in any given financial year (with any excess carried forward against the capital gains tax liability when the property is sold); and use the resulting savings to help local governments to reduce upfront charges imposed on developers, and in various other ways increase the supply of low-cost housing.

http://www.smh.com.au/business/billions ... 1bvvs.html

He also attacks negative gearing.....

The Australian income tax system provides substantial incentives for people to borrow money to acquire property, shares or other assets with a value they expect will appreciate over time. Unlike most other countries, it has always been possible in Australia to deduct any excess of interest payments on loans taken out to fund an investment over the income produced by that investment to reduce the tax payable on wage or salary income.

Since the Howard government’s decision in 1999 to tax capital gains at half the rate applicable to the same amount of wage and salary income, a decision that was supported by the then opposition, ”negative gearing” has become a means not only of deferring tax, but also permanently reducing it.

In 1998-99, when capital gains were last taxed at the same rate as other types of income (less an allowance for inflation), Australia had 1.3 million tax-paying landlords who in total made a taxable profit of almost $700 million. By 2007-08, the latest year for which statistics are available, the number of tax-paying landlords had risen to 1.7 million, but they collectively lost more than $8.6 billion, largely because the amount they paid out in interest rose more than fourfold (from about $5 billion to more than $20 billion over this period), while the amount they collected in rent ”only” slightly more than doubled (from $11 billion to $24 billion), as did other (non-interest) expenses.

If all the 1.2 million landlords who reported net losses in 2007-08 were in the 38 per cent income tax bracket, their ability to offset those losses against their other taxable income would have cost more than $4.8 billion in revenue forgone; if (say) a fifth of them had been in the top tax bracket, then the cost to revenue would have been more than $5 billion.

This is a pretty big subsidy from people who are working and saving to people who are borrowing and speculating (since those landlords who are making ”running losses” on their property investments expect to more than make up those losses through capital gains when they eventually sell them).

http://www.smh.com.au/business/imagine- ... 1ceqb.html

I have no doubt that Australia has developed a real affordability problem. The lowest estimates I can find of sale prices to first time buyers (Australian Financiers Group - have misplaced the link) show an average that approaches double what we paid. We are of relatively modest means but there is no way in hell that most of these kids have household incomes significantly greater than ours.

We have always been told that house prices can only ever go UP (except everywhere else in the world where they have ever gone sharply DOWN, and for long periods of time) - anyone who buys at sky high prices would very quickly find themselves under water in the event of any kind of price fall ( as 1 in every 4 US homeowners are now suffering).

We now have at least 1.2 million people who are deliberately losing money (but are supported by the tax sytem) buying houses they don't need on the premise that they will sell for large price gains in the relatively near future, despite the fact that the effect of this mass movemnt of tax supported sellers looks to have already pushed affordability to the limits.. Such "investment" now constitutes a third of all activity in the housing market.

I'm not convinced that this gold rush mentality toward housing by such large numbers of people all at the same time is likely to end well.

Yeah, twitter-like!

[Rainbow Moonlight]

Looks like the second choice of members is Boxy from the result of the current election. He was my second choice too.

I think Monk does a good job on his forum. I disagree that Monk doesn't allow dissent.

[Jovial Monk]

Just remembered, Sprinty arrived on Deepy’s board and was screaming he had been banned—now that really is flimsy evidence for it

[Jovial Monk]

thx rainbow.

King Paul has had a couple of goes at me re Labor v Greens

Wish there were a couple of intelligent Libs on my board (hmmm “intelligent Lib” is that an oxymoron? Sorry Lisa Jones, couldn’t resist.)

[IQS.RLOW]

I disagree that Monk doesn't allow dissent.

I vote you for the dumbest poster on this board

[Jovial Monk]

IQ does tend to push the “Yes” vote for “oxymoron.”