the property industry looks for sympathy

You have to cringe when you see how easily the property lobby take the public for ride with misleading information published as serious article in The Age – being Melbourne main newspaper.

Last Friday we had the housing industry pointing out that they have a crisis on their hands given the high number of unoccupied new apartments across Melbourne. In the Melbourne CBD this is around 1600 with several other areas having 200 to 600 unoccupied apartments.

The property industry’s own  ‘independent’ expert have identified about 8000 units sitting out there unsold or unoccupied.

This level of unoccupied apartments will, according to the article, hinder the Victorian governments efforts to build the many new activity centres  – being dense apartments sites around transport nodes.

The industry plus its expert pointed to the obvious solution. Why didn’t everyone else think of this.

It was not that the developers should stop building defective apartments. Nor was it that developers should stop adding huge premiums to the costs so that less new home buyers can afford to buy into this market. Nope not that – after when huige profits are the norm why not continue..

Nor was it any solution to deal with the reality that developers build what they like and expect buyers to buy even though these apartments are often cramped and badly designed. So many are not what people are looking for especially if couples are thinking of raining families in their new homes.

Nor was the solution to deal with the lack of amenity – no greenery, no real playgrounds and often on sites along super busy roads no where near good shopping centres.

What did they propose? The government needs to reduce the the taxes involved with buy an apartment. That is, the developers should keep their super profit margins and keep building crap while  the taxpayer helps them out with a reduction of the property tax.

Easy!!

We can only dream of the day when state governments take planning, architecture and urban development seriously and they stop paying attention to the cries of the property lobby for more taxpayer funded assistance to keep up their levels of profits.