There's a familiar refrain when public discussion turns to Australia's eye-wateringly expensive housing market: Foreigners are to blame.
Even for those on low incomes, things appear to be turning. While Sydney is still alarmingly expensive, the number of properties advertised for rent at 30 per cent or less of a typical minimum-wage income has doubled in less than two years to more than a fifth of total advertisements, according to a report this week by Anglicare Australia.
Foreign - particularly Chinese - spending on Australian real estate has certainly been significant. Chinese investment rose more than 10-fold between 2010 and 2016 to hit $32 billion, enough on its own to represent nearly 15 per cent of total reportable external investment in the country, according to data from the Foreign Investment Review Board or FIRB.In recent years, about a quarter of all overseas real estate investment has come from mainland China.
That's helped the country in two ways. First, home sales sit alongside tourism, education and the export of iron ore, coal, natural gas and gold as one of Australia's biggest sources of foreign capital. Perhaps more importantly, though, those inflows have led to a boom in home-building that's one of the main reasons the country's housing bubble is now gently deflating.in recent Australian history when housing starts ran consistently ahead of household formation.
Of course overseas buyers contributed to exorbitant prices as did tax funded local investors . Greater demand means higher prices in Economics .
And look at how ugly our suburbs are now with all those apartment blocks. Slums of the future. No town planning.
What a crock of 💩
. What 'downward pressure' looks like...
. The 'logic' behind this article is utterly risible... 'In recent years, about a quarter of all overseas real estate investment has come from mainland China' So, that's helping 'prick' the housing un-affordability crisis, is it?
We need affordable housing for first home buyers and renters. VoteSustainable Vote for SustainableAustralia auspol ausvotes ausvotes2019 ausvotes19 sausagesizzle democracysausage
narrator: like always everywhere