2d ago

Great job, good education, no home: is Australia’s bloated property market destroying the middle class?

www.theguardian.com

11 comments

There is no middle class anymore, there's only have and have nots. And I don't believe it's 100% property market at all - it's the upper echelon rich funneling money from all working class into their pockets.
Eat the rich.
It’s destroying everyone but the ones who benefit.
It seems like it’s taken such a long time for news outlets to become outwardly critical but even then it isn’t likely there’ll be any change because there’s a vested interest.
- Well that and guess who owns / owned realestate.com.au and domain
  
  Absolutely
But everyone keeps telling me it's all those immigrants! /s
You want to create a strong far right leaning voting block? Because this is how you do it. Just ask Canada.
- tbf this mainly all appears to stem from COVID and is impacting most of the western world
  Finding housing in Paris is getting harder – even for young people making good money
  While the housing crisis in the French capital primarily affects the most vulnerable, it has become so severe that even young employees with a monthly income of €3,000 are struggling.
  https://www.lemonde.fr/en/campus/article/2025/04/26/finding-housing-in-paris-is-getting-harder-even-for-young-people-making-good-money_6740657_11.html
  We need more houses but houses have never been more difficult to build
  
  More supply is part of what's needed, absolutely.
  But there's more to it than just that. The amount of incentives to invest in housing means more people bidding on a house, which raises the price of the house, which makes housing an even better investment, so more people bid on the next house, which raises housing prices even further. We need to cut that off by strongly disincentivising the use of housing as people's primary investment.
  There are other things that could be done, like a levy on unoccupied homes (including "holiday homes" which might be occupied only a few weeks or months per year) and on unregulated hotels (Airbnb). And better protections for renters. And preventing developers from land-banking or drip-feeding homes onto the market rather than building as much as they can.
  Realistically, the housing market is so fucked, we need a mix of all of these.
  
  Housing was no better before COVID.
Not solely, but it's certainly helping.

11 comments