Detached housing is built by non union labour, apartment buildings are all constructed by CFMEU members. As long as that is the case detached housing will always be cheaper
All these types of articles are making me very depressed and I have no solutions other than socialism.
In theory I should be sitting pretty. 4 bed house built about 4 years ago located about 5km from the Brisbane CBD. I have been looking to downsize and ideally I want a small home on a small block, but do you think I can find one that isn't located in the boondocks? I am not keen on units, especially newly built units, so that leaves villas. Went to open house on the weekend - a villa I was negotiating to buy privately got brought for $770k just last month. This weekend a similar villa in the same estate went for $820k. The price differential between a bigger and newer detached house ($1.4m) and an older (1990's) smaller villa is shrinking and I can't see a value proposition in selling. Luckily I don't have to sell, but it is getter harder, if not impossible, to find a decent house for the older chap.
I walked away from that open house recalling the words of Ross Barker (demographer) ringing in my years when in the mid 1990's he was talking of the demographic time bomb of an aging population and the need to start planning for more diverse housing needs NOW! So we dutifully beavered away on upzoning (TOD), smaller lots and even densification in the middle suburbs. But you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. Developers are like lemmings - they go with what works and if their real estate pals are whispering "build bigger houses" whether they be attached or detached - that is what we got. Smaller houses on smaller lots wasn't done and I suspect that why villa prices are shooting up - scarcity value for a cohort who are crying out for this type of living (i.e. a house, albeit a mini-house without the high costs of strata units).
Now that is just one cohort and there are plenty of others in far worst position, so I am not here to complain. But my wider point is there seems to be a multitude of problems out there and there will NEVER be a perfect alignment of positive things, but instead a piling up of negative things that I just can't see any solution working on a bigger scale (apart from socialism)!
If we are to go down the apartment route, then I thought this video was a good design experiment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=011TOfugais. It would have some issues with Building Standards, but if they can demonstrate achieving the same outcome, some of these ideas are brilliant, especially given the paucity of bad design and pokey places that pass for modern apartment living nowadays.
I don't really understand how throwing more money at an industry is ever going to make it cheaper? My understanding is a lot of these "militant bakers union demanding extortionate wages for seemingly unskilled tasks" are first negotiated for government contracts, with the "extortionate wages" flowing down into the rest of the industry. Having government involvement in these projects would seem to allow for an extra point of leverage for these "militant bakers unions" to push for even higher wages.
If we're willing to pay high prices for apartments then apartment prices will stay high. Spending government money instead of developer money doesn't change that.
I don't disagree with you in principle, but the point I was trying to make is that given the supply shortage, we really can't afford to spend the next 5 years building a small handful of apartments. We need to keep building what we can during this period so that the demand/supply situation isn't significantly worse down the road. I don't think this should be a permanent policy for all the reasons you outline.
Ultimately I'd like to see a much stronger public developer like you see in Singapore and Vienna to better serve the lower half of the market - because the private sector literally can't produce anything affordable right now.
Detached housing is built by non union labour, apartment buildings are all constructed by CFMEU members. As long as that is the case detached housing will always be cheaper
Is that true that apartments are all constructed by CFMEU? I thought it was mostly government projects that they have all sewn up?
Don’t know about the labor source, but the higher you build, the higher the construction cost per square meter.
All these types of articles are making me very depressed and I have no solutions other than socialism.
In theory I should be sitting pretty. 4 bed house built about 4 years ago located about 5km from the Brisbane CBD. I have been looking to downsize and ideally I want a small home on a small block, but do you think I can find one that isn't located in the boondocks? I am not keen on units, especially newly built units, so that leaves villas. Went to open house on the weekend - a villa I was negotiating to buy privately got brought for $770k just last month. This weekend a similar villa in the same estate went for $820k. The price differential between a bigger and newer detached house ($1.4m) and an older (1990's) smaller villa is shrinking and I can't see a value proposition in selling. Luckily I don't have to sell, but it is getter harder, if not impossible, to find a decent house for the older chap.
I walked away from that open house recalling the words of Ross Barker (demographer) ringing in my years when in the mid 1990's he was talking of the demographic time bomb of an aging population and the need to start planning for more diverse housing needs NOW! So we dutifully beavered away on upzoning (TOD), smaller lots and even densification in the middle suburbs. But you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. Developers are like lemmings - they go with what works and if their real estate pals are whispering "build bigger houses" whether they be attached or detached - that is what we got. Smaller houses on smaller lots wasn't done and I suspect that why villa prices are shooting up - scarcity value for a cohort who are crying out for this type of living (i.e. a house, albeit a mini-house without the high costs of strata units).
Now that is just one cohort and there are plenty of others in far worst position, so I am not here to complain. But my wider point is there seems to be a multitude of problems out there and there will NEVER be a perfect alignment of positive things, but instead a piling up of negative things that I just can't see any solution working on a bigger scale (apart from socialism)!
If we are to go down the apartment route, then I thought this video was a good design experiment https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=011TOfugais. It would have some issues with Building Standards, but if they can demonstrate achieving the same outcome, some of these ideas are brilliant, especially given the paucity of bad design and pokey places that pass for modern apartment living nowadays.
I don't really understand how throwing more money at an industry is ever going to make it cheaper? My understanding is a lot of these "militant bakers union demanding extortionate wages for seemingly unskilled tasks" are first negotiated for government contracts, with the "extortionate wages" flowing down into the rest of the industry. Having government involvement in these projects would seem to allow for an extra point of leverage for these "militant bakers unions" to push for even higher wages.
If we're willing to pay high prices for apartments then apartment prices will stay high. Spending government money instead of developer money doesn't change that.
Thanks for reading and commenting Chris!
I don't disagree with you in principle, but the point I was trying to make is that given the supply shortage, we really can't afford to spend the next 5 years building a small handful of apartments. We need to keep building what we can during this period so that the demand/supply situation isn't significantly worse down the road. I don't think this should be a permanent policy for all the reasons you outline.
Ultimately I'd like to see a much stronger public developer like you see in Singapore and Vienna to better serve the lower half of the market - because the private sector literally can't produce anything affordable right now.