This is such a :lol: worthy article in my opinion... it was in the "Life and Style" section of the SMH website (http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/lifematters/emerald-city-held-to-ransom-by-state-padlock-on-greenfields-survey-20100126-mwf2.html), so it is obviously slanted towards an obvious angle... we can lay the blame for high house prices squarely on not enough sprawl...

Emerald city held to ransom by state padlock on greenfields: survey
PAUL BIBBY
January 27, 2010

http://images.smh.com.au/2010/01/26/1068563/housingcosts-420x0.jpg

Sydney is one of the least affordable places to buy a home, an international survey has found - and its authors say government land release policies bear a large part of the blame.

The harbour city placed second only to Vancouver on a list of the world's most expensive residential markets compiled by the Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey of 272 markets in six countries.

Melbourne and Adelaide were not far behind - ranked third and fourth in the list of least affordable major cities, above London, New York and San Francisco.

As a result, Australia was by far the least affordable of the countries surveyed, followed by New Zealand, Britain, Canada, Ireland and the United States.

''Australia registered the worst housing affordability in the history of the survey,'' said Wendell Cox and Hugh Pavletich, the authors of the annual survey for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Canada.

''The average household would be required to pay more than 50 per cent of its income to service a new mortgage on the median-priced house in Sydney or Melbourne,'' they said.

''In Dallas-Fort Worth or Atlanta, the household would pay under 20 per cent.''

The survey employed the "median multiple" ranking formula, dividing median house prices by gross annual median household income to rate affordability.

Perth was the cheapest Australian capital with a rating of 5.5 (Sydney was 6.1) and was the only Australian capital to remain no less affordable.

But it is a relative money pit compared with the American rustbelt cities of Detroit (1.6), Lansing and Youngstown (each 1.7), which were the cheapest cities surveyed, largely as a result of the global financial crisis.

Responsibility for the affordability crisis in Sydney was laid squarely at the feet of the State Government by the authors.

They said the Government's preference for urban consolidation over the release of greenfield sites on the city fringes had created a critical shortage of land that was suitable for development, driving up prices.

A Sydney activist, Tony Recsei, who wrote the introduction to the survey, said greenfield sites on the edge of Sydney needed to be opened up to the free market. ''Higher densities are neither practical nor desirable,'' he said.

Professor Peter Phibbs from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute said the methodology of the survey was ''too simplistic''.

''Housing affordability is associated with many variables, including income levels and employment trends, access to finance, demographic shifts, and housing preferences,'' he said.

''The Demographia surveys reduce this very complex issue to a simple causal relationship between house prices and planning constraints on land supply.

''Also, comparing Sydney to Detroit isn't really fair. Sydney is one of the world's best cities, and that creates price pressures that aren't there and will never be there in, say, Kansas.''

Oh boy. Another spruiker article, ie, from Demographia.

When can we burn this Tony guy up on stake? This is sacrilege!

I googled him up and this blog entry comes up!

http://themichaelduffyfiles.blogspot.com/2009/01/aint-it-grand.html

Tony Recsei, High Rise, High Hopes, Canute and Sydney as a new Gotham for Batman

Ain't it grand. With the Duffster somewhere invisible as the NSW government announces plans to cram all the poor rats into high rise towers (like they've already done in Redfern), The Sydney Morning Herald must have decided they needed a Duffy clone to speak about the tragedy.

Cue Tony Recsei and Rise of high-density living a new low for Sydney. Poor Tony is terribly worried about the prospect of Sydney turning into a high rise concrete and bitumen jungle (you can sense he lives on the North Shore because only a benighted denizen of that suburban jungle could think everything is currently terribly green in Sydney.)

He lists six huge ways that Sydney will suffer - greenhouse gases, failure to convert to public transport, congestion, health damage, overloaded infrastructure, cost of housing, and cost of commercial land.

After doing his Chicken Little - after each point, you feel like asking "so?" - he ends with a pious hope: "We have no quarrel with those who prefer living in a high-density area, nor with those developers who take advantage of the free market to fulfill that limited demand. But Bureau of Statistics figures show 83 per cent of us prefer to live in a free-standing home, and we do object to draconian policies forcing us to live in bland high-rise units".

Then the tag at the end reveals all. Tony is an environmental consultant and president of Save Our Suburbs.

Newsflash Tony: barring World War 111, a total economic meltdown, the seas rising to swamp Circular Quay or similar catastrophes which means all bets are off (did I mention comets?), Sydney is going to keep growing, going to keep getting more and more compressed, forcing more and more rats to live in housing which won't be a free-standing home. Housing and land prices will go up, things will get more intense and cramped, and anyone who stays will have to learn to live with it and get along.

Another newsflash Tony: this is hardly news. The tendency in inner city living in the nineteenth century was to force poverty-stricken rats into terrace houses joined at the hip (which means you can usually hear your neighbour having a vigorous fuck through the paper-thin joining wall, giving a whole new meaning to neighbourly intimacy).

And this long standing trend isn't going to change. Trying to stop people coming here, trying to stop this growth, is a bit like King Canute trying to stop the tide. Realising it's happening and managing it as best we can - a task clearly beyond the current Labor government - is the best we can hope for, and plaintive articles yearning for lost days of yore are no help. Nor is it any use quoting statistics saying we'd all prefer to live in a stand-alone home going to help.

Heck, if anyone asked me, or many others if we'd prefer to live in a stand-alone palace on the Mediterranean, or a stand-alone brownstone on the upper east side of New York, or a handsome self-contained maison in the heart of Paris, I'm pretty sure I could get a ninety per cent 'in favor' percentage. But you can't always get what you want, unless you develop big enough boobs to appeal to James Packer.

There is however an upside. As Sydney gets to be the new Gotham, maybe we can persuade Spiderman and Batman to re-locate. Jeepers, their first job could be sorting out NSW politicians and their second environmental consultants who don't seem to have a clue.

And there is also another solution. Last time I checked out Adelaide, it was as flat as a Pancake Parlour pancake, and just as appetizing. And if Adelaide doesn't work, why not head off to save Darwin, or Perth, or Hobart? Melbourne's already shooting up like a gawky young thing who's discovered there's more to life than black, and Brisbane wants to take over the world.

And Sydney is gone, gone, gone. Hand that developer a chain-saw Tony, the man has work to do and you say you don't want to stand in his way. Better idea: why don't you stand in his way? It didn't work for the Black Knight in Monty Python, but can it work for you?

Moral for the day: conservatives fear the future because deep down they know they can't control it.

http://www.sos.org.au/new_aboutus.html

Operations

Office Holders Save Our Suburbs (SOS) NSW Inc:

President: Tony Recsei

Oh look, Wendel Cox is back again pushing his own agenda. Hurrah for Demographia.

Higher densities are the reality of living in Sydney these days. Has Tony travelled to Europe and seen how people live there?

I do think that more land needs to be released though. We only release half the sites that other Australian cities do.

^ Yeah, more land Fabian. We don't need to eat or anything. :ohno:

Increase the height limit and FSR around the existing transport nodes. That'll solve the problem.

Demographia's view mey be biased to sprawl and somewhat misguided (I've actually read the report on the Demographia website and it praises Atlanta and Dallas for their policies of unrestrained land releasing), but it's still a shocker how unaffordable we've become. I was expecting the results from the 6th edition to being something like this anyway seeing that those other markets (besides NZ) have had crashes while ours has skyrocketed.

^ Yeah, more land Fabian. We don't need to eat or anything. :ohno:

I'm not saying that every new home has to be a on a greenfield site.

http://www.sos.org.au/new_aboutus.html

Operations

Office Holders Save Our Suburbs (SOS) NSW Inc:

President: Tony Recsei

haha, good find! The moment I read that bit, I knew it reeked of an agenda of some sort.

If its low density developments he wants, why doesn't he just move to Melbourne's outer suburbs?

it's not fair, it seems like most houses in places like dallas are luxury by australian standards and the people are living in them cheaper than we are in our weatherboards. kinda makes me want to move there.

On ya bike then young chap...

The SMH are cunts for publishing this piece with no disclaimer. Their pro-sprawl, anti PT agenda has gone on for far too long. I hope you guys don't buy this trash.

Hell, even our right-wing West Australian Newspaper supports higher densities, PT and city development in Perth!

http://www.sos.org.au/new_aboutus.html

Operations

Office Holders Save Our Suburbs (SOS) NSW Inc:

President: Tony Recsei

Michael Duffy used to have a blog on the SMH website called Urban Jungle - I recall a blog entry related to the cons of urban consolidation, fronted by Tony Rescei. Couldn't find the blog in question, it appears to have been taken down (or hidden from the blogcentral page) - it was an interesting read to say the least...

The SMH are cunts for publishing this piece with no disclaimer. Their pro-sprawl, anti PT agenda has gone on for far too long. I hope you guys don't buy this trash.

Their inquiry into Sydney's transport seems to have gone very quiet too after the public meetings were held in october.

Perhaps an editorial change at the SMH?

On ya bike then young chap...

The SMH are cunts for publishing this piece with no disclaimer. Their pro-sprawl, anti PT agenda has gone on for far too long. I hope you guys don't buy this trash.

Hell, even our right-wing West Australian Newspaper supports higher densities, PT and city development in Perth!

How are moderators chosen Dilaz?

Their inquiry into Sydney's transport seems to have gone very quiet too after the public meetings were held in october.

Perhaps an editorial change at the SMH?

That will start up again though when the NSW Transport Blueprint is released in the end of this month.

Last thing needed is more sprawl.

This, along with poor public transportation and infrastructure planning are the final nails in Sydney's coffin. If there isn't a push for more radical change then this city is basically a "dead man walking".

Sydney can only grow upwards and not outwards! :ohno:

How are moderators chosen Dilaz?

they use tha 8-10 hawtness scale...

dilaz obviously scored highly.

:)

mod4lyfe.

The only way for Sydney is up, i do agree.

Sydney is stuffed now, no matter what. The time for slowing growth or a lot more infrastructure was 10-15 years ago, now we are completely stuffed no matter what happens.

Sydney is stuffed now, no matter what. The time for slowing growth or a lot more infrastructure was 10-15 years ago, now we are completely stuffed no matter what happens.

Probably right there. It is a policy logjam as well as an economic one.

You could fix it with Louis Napoleon/Baron Haussman type intervention but nothing less.

The biggest contributor by far towards high house prices is easy access to CREDIT. It is the single biggest driver of the property boom. People go on blaming immigration, lack of land releases etc etc but that only goes a small percentage to explaining things. Countries like the UK and USA have high immigration and land shortages yet they have just experienced a massive property bubble bust. Our house prices started to decrease until Krudd gave everyone even easier credit in the way of the first home owners boost. When this is pulled (it has been) and credit becomes harder to get (100% home loans) etc dissapear, property prices will stagnate or drop. Most probably stagnate for years. Which in REAL terms taking into account inflation, property prices will drop.