Group items tagged

Hometrack's Brendan Darcy recently released analysis claiming that the ABS data significantly under-estimated the housing supply in Australia, because it only counts "occupied dwellings". But on census night in 2006, the ABS reported 830,000 unoccupied dwellings. "We estimate there are at least 10 million dwellings in Australia compared with ABS data showing occupied dwellings of 8.3 million. The extra one to two million dwellings consist of a mixture of housing awaiting sale or development, vacant dwellings, second homes, and abandoned homes," Darcy concluded.

Australia has one of the most skewed property taxation regimes in the industrialised world, rewarding investors and owner-occupiers at the expense of renters and those looking to buy a house. The Capital Gains Tax exemption for the family home costs taxpayers $30 billion a year, disproportionately advantaging those of us who own multi-million dollar homes.

the number of landlords reporting profits grew by 36,000, while those reporting losses grew by 594,000.

'Site-writing' examines how writing art criticism can be understood as a form of situated practice where the writing responds to those site suggested by the artwork: those that are there as well as here, those that exist in the memories and imaginations of the artist and critic as well as in the tangible present, those connected to the sites of the work's production as well as reception.This workshop asks you to remake one site in relation to another, specifically to explore the potential of writing as a way of making relations between sites. Writing here includes not only as script but also as text, which might include visual images, and/or words as images, and also words as they are spoken and performed.

Which brings me to an annual event which illustrates the failings of real estate journalism more than any other situation: the publication of a piece of self-serving propaganda called the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey.

This document is political posturing by vested interests and should never be featured by any media outlet in Australia. It is published by a lobby group that campaigns for the end of government regulations that restrict the activities of land developers. The group argues that regulation causes prices to rise and makes homes unaffordable. It has created a political document masquerading as research to support their views.