Australia

Congratulations to Bob Day, who was elected as a federal Senator from South Australia. Day was one of six Senators elected from the state in the September 7 election. While most of the seats in the lower house of Parliament were quickly decided, the Senate seats too considerably longer under Australia’s preferential voting system.  read more »

The New South Wales Department of Transport Housing and Transportation Survey reports that the average one way work trip in the Sydney metropolitan area (statistical division) reached 34.3 minutes in 2010. As a result, Sydney now has the longest reported commute time in the New World (United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand), except for the New York City metropolitan area (34.6 minutes).  read more »

Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph contained an interesting article on the increasing number of Australians departing Australia permanently:  read more »

Glenn Stevens, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia expressed concern about the growing gap in housing affordability in the nation to a parliamentary committee on Friday. Stevens raised questions about the cost and supply of housing, asking:

"How is it that we can't add to the dwelling stock for the marginal new entrant more cheaply than we seem to be able to do," he asked.  read more »

There is nothing better than a good old count to check out what’s really happening.  And a lot has happened across Australia over the last five years.  But what actually has happen to the country’s demographic fabric might surprise many. 
There are ten trends which I think will emerge out of our next national count on Tuesday 9th August.  read more »

The median price of serviced (improved) lots for new houses in Adelaide is reported to have risen above that of far larger Sydney by the Housing Industry Association of South Australia. Housing Industry Association of South Australian Executive Director Robert Harding attributed the high price of land to government policies that have limited the supply of land available for building.  read more »

Too much property reporting and media attention is given to our capital cities, and not enough effort is spent analysing our regional towns. 

As a result, too few investors understand Australia’s regional potential.  Right now, not only are many of our regional centres at the bottom of their cycle, but larger, long-term trends are at play.  Indeed, regional Australia is on the cusp of some big demographic changes.   read more »

Even if Australia is a beautiful place to live, it is far from affordable. Results from the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey show that some of the country’s major cities rank near the bottom of the list of areas with affordable housing. Out of the 325 cities analyzed, Perth ranks 291st, Melbourne ranks 321st, and Sydney ranks 324th.  read more »

Local government consolidations are often proposed by a wide range of interests, often out of the belief that they will produce more efficient (less costly) governments. Much of the academic literature supports this view. However, the evidence indicates that material savings routinely fail to occur from such amalgamations. The claimed $300 million annual savings in Toronto's megacity quickly became higher costs and a larger bureaucracy.  read more »

The Age (Melbourne) headlined a story "CBA Accused of Choosing its Facts." CBA is the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, while UBS is the Swiss investment house. Commonwealth produced a report comparing housing affordability in Australian metropolitan areas to international metropolitan areas (Australian Housing and Mortgages: CBA Mortgage Book Secure).  read more »