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Comment by Gigachad | Hacker News Reader

Reverse going on in Australia right now. International students have returned and a semi decent 2 bedroom apartment is now averaging $800/pw in Melbourne.

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Housing here is insane. We need long leases, tenants on body corporate, and rent price controls. Really.. what we need is sustained investment in state housing, which all the states gave up on during the post-keating privatisation storm. They don't understand their role as provider of socialised influence in the rental market.

Its been left to private sector and 'negative gearing' tax breaks for investor-owners fuel the insanity. Now, with so many private owners vested, they are unwilling to risk voter backlash to undo the madness of 25+ years of bad planning.

In Queensland, they had a really stupid relationship with cooperative housing movements, co-owning properties in the inner city. Then they realized the huge value proposition in the land, booted the tenants out to cheaper outer suburbs and realized the capital gain. It sucks. Gutting suburbs like west end in Brisbane where I live did nobody any favours. Why shouldn't working class people live in the inner city too? They always used to!

(I'm an owner occupier. I just think rental madness in Australia is sucking life force out of younger people)

Everybody loves to hate on socialised housing but the alternatives are far far worse.

It's insane how the 3 countries with the most space per human & least historic infrastructure: USA, Canada & Australia also have the worst housing crunch in the world right now.

Housing is not an investment. It is a depreciating asset. The anglo-world has done to housing what Singapore has done to cars. It is no wonder that a Toyota Camry costs 150,000 USD there.

There's not really a housing crunch in small town USA, more broadly space isn't the issue, the concentration of economic activity is the issue.

Like small towns don't necessarily do a good job of managing development, but you can buy a very reasonable house where I am for $150,000 (and pay a lot less if you want).

Similarly I'm sure that in the Australian outback one can find an affordable home, or in the Yukon. The problem is housing prices in the places people want to live and are able to find work.

There is something in between. There are places that are accessible--if not every day conveniently commutable--to reasonably-sized cities that are pretty reasonably-priced. But that's not a great tradeoff for someone who wants to live in the core of a relatively major city where they can walk to restaurants and twee coffeeshops--or does need to commute into the city most days.

Yeah, that's what I was getting at, it's not the abundance or lack of space that is the issue. Thanks for emphasizing!

The Yukon is insanely expensive. A single family home is C$639K. A condo is C$416K. Maybe better than Vancouver (C$1.9M), but still crazy compared with incomes (median is C$100K).

https://yukon.ca/sites/yukon.ca/files/ybs/fin-yukon-real-est...

The houses will be cheaper in the outback for sure, but they will be less plentiful. Good luck finding a decent rental outside of cities.

The physical structure is not that valuable in Australia. It's the land its on. You can get a house of some description in Australia for very cheap. It just won't be in the nice inner city areas. It'll be an outer suburb with dismal public transport access so very few people want to live there. The majority of Australians would rather live in a crumbling shitbox if it's within 20 minutes train distance to the CBD over a large house in the outer areas which involve a 2 hour train trip each way.

International students in particular will only consider the CBD as acceptable and will pay whatever it costs to live in this roughly 1 square kilometer area.

Not true as of late - there is a construction slowdown, so even lower grade houses in rural areas with no services are going for unattainable prices. 700k for Albury is insane. We have a supply issue.

To be fair, it’s a very intentional policy on SG’s part, since the low land area puts a brake on how many cars can be accommodated while maintaining free flow traffic.

A quick search suggests cars are expensive in Singapore because of the taxes. I don't see how that relates to housing in the mentioned countries, but maybe I misunderstood the sources about Singapore.

Singapore guarantees you a house. They don't guarantee its cheap, or nice. But they do have a social housing commitment. Their superannuation is phenomenal as well. The downside is you have to be a LOT more socially conformist, although thats loosening up a bit too.

Well, Singapore also has a proudly racist immigration policy which is unlikely to ever change.

Same in the UK. Rents were up 10% annually in 2022. Meanwhile, new housebuilding is at the lowest level since WW2, and the government has surrendered to NIMBYs and abandoned all construction targets and loosening of planning laws. Looking forward to the when shantytowns start popping up in the UK, to really underscore its regression to developing nation status.

Pw=per week? I ask because in the US rent is typically monthly

Yes, Australian rents are fairly universally listed per week.

It's probably in AU$ so it cancels out /s

It cancels out a bit of the shock. It seems that apartment is ~$2200/mo in USD.

closer to US$2,350

Would you buy a property in Australia right now given the rates and future prospects or continue renting with this prices ?

If you believe in efficient markets, both options should be roughly equal value.

"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

Originally said about short selling, IIR, but the same principal applies.

I did the conversion and that’s about what you would pay for a downtown apartment in my city too.

Same in Canada.

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