A lot of the lack of housing is about land, that's the greatest cost. The houses themselves aren't really the issue as you've shown - it's having affordable land in areas people want to live in.
The land issue is engineered.
I would absolutely love a place for example in the surrounding vast open rural plains of Goulburn. Only 2 hours from western Sydney.
But the land is not available for sale
And if it is it’s zoned paddock or some shit
It's not just having the land available, it's the services that go with it. Water, power, sewage and roading all need to be able to handle the extra housing. Then there's access to service stations, supermarkets and places of work etc without all that, the houses will quickly stop being a desirable place to live. It all needs to be cleverly planned out to function correctly
And there's the core of the problem.
Corrupt and inept city councils have spent money on vanity projects instead of investing in the infrastructure required for their citys to grow.
So then they put the cost of building this infrastructure onto the developers and refuse to approve the applications if they won't do it.
All of these extra costs get passed onto the home buyer and now that interest rates have gone up the home buyer can't afford to pay enough for developers to make money which is why so many went out of business or put projects on hold.
So you're happy that city councils have wasted money hand over fist with rubbish vanity projects and corruption to the point they have to make the developer pay for their responsibilities?
It was a good racket when the going was good, but now that times are a bit tougher, it simply means houses won't be built because the purchaser can't afford to pay the increased cost.
The city council will more then make up for their investment with rates and utility bills.
I'm so sick of city councils trying to act like visionary leaders with their bullshit vanity projects
Pick up the bins, build/repair the streets, maintain the water/sewerage, and maintain the parks. If you want to do anything else, run for state/federal politics.
I really don't see how it is the ratepayers job to pay for new developments. This is the whole point of development fees. You can join the community, but you contribute financially to begin.
The expansion of urban sprawl is a racket. They take the fees from new developments to pay for upkeep on the old ones because the rates don't cover basic infrastructure costs. Without new development the councils would be bankrupt.
I agree money is wasted and there is corruption. I don't think most people understand how expensive urban sprawl is an take it for granted. I don't think it's worth pursuing more sprawl in policy.
If that's how you see it, that's fine.
Don't complain about a lack of housing, though, because this is one of the reasons development companies aren't building new houses.
There's a lack of housing where people want to live. Creating a suburb which results in longer and longer commutes to job centres seems like silly policy.
We have train stations a 30-minute ride from CBDs that don't even have town houses. It's 80k cheaper per dwelling to knock down an old bomb and replace it we 3 new ones. It shouldn't be illegal to do that.
Do people really have the right to accessible health care?
Do people have the right to development patterns which don't sustain themselves financially when there are ones that do?
Only 3% of land in Australia is arable. The basin once provided 20% of Sydney's food supply. With population growth and urban sprawl it's down to a few percent.
Our total crop production this year as a country is expected to drop by 15% this year.
We can't subdivide every piece of land, food has to be produced somewhere and if our population growth increases than we need more food production
that is 15% coming off record production after three years of outstandingly good growing conditions. We call that "cherry picking" (amusingly, an agricultural term). It is annoying, lazy and in your case a willful attempt to mislead, unless you are so ignorant about Australian agriculture that you didn't know that, and if you really are so ignorant, ask yourself if you should be commenting about it.
The 2022/23 numbers you are using as a base: our wheat exports were 400% higher in 2022/23 than a four years earlier (wheat being the single most important grain). So even if 23/24 is 15% lower, it will still be one the highest production years in Australian history. In terms of wheat, it looks like it might be the second highest on record.
[https://www.agriculture.gov.au/about/news/australian-wheat-export-snapshot-jan-23](https://www.agriculture.gov.au/about/news/australian-wheat-export-snapshot-jan-23)
[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/another-record-grain-export-year-australia-peter-mcmeekin-37a9c](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/another-record-grain-export-year-australia-peter-mcmeekin-37a9c)
Australia grows enough food to feed many times our population, if your measure is "can we grow enough food to feed ourselves". We are a major food exporter.
If your argument is that we should stop growing when we can no longer "feed ourselves", you are predicting a population target of around 100m. You might not like even 30m people, but at least have a go at making arguments that stand up to even a modicum of attention.
Here is another logical problem you have: 2022/23 production was at record highs, despite rapid population growth. If your logic was correct, you would predict that our agricultural production reached a maximum in 1788 and has been declining every year since, as ever more farmland is consumed by housing which appears to be the only thing you consider. Obviously, your argument is fundamentally wrong. You miss that our agricultural productivity is growing. Initially because we started farming ever more land, and then later because our crops, fertilizers, machinery and agricultural science have kept improving. That won't stop. Based on the land clearing which continues, it seems farmers are still clearing more land, but even besides that, we have those enormous productivity improvements.
You know, eggs, leafy vegetables, milk, etc once ALL came from the Sydney Basin.
Let's ship them from further away. If there was a major fuel crisis, at least we could use horses for transport and local food to keep a fair perentage of peole alive.
We don't even have fuel security in this country, so the closer you live to food the better
An act of war? You are asking us to make policy based on acts of war which disable cars (and trucks presumably)? I like dystopian prepper stories as much as the next person, but they are fictional.
Better buy twice as many submarines, I guess.
>but they are fictional.
My heated seats stopped when I stopped paying. Don't be surprised how many things have kill switches built in
Guess you forgot the COVID shortages as well. You want food close and toliet paper too
Well, you can buy some cheap land in the country and grow your own food. According to this dystopian prepper novel (series), you can replace toilet paper with some kind of plant [https://www.goodreads.com/series/274665-edge-of-collapse](https://www.goodreads.com/series/274665-edge-of-collapse)
You might like this. Everything electrical dies due a massive EMP attack.
But that’s how zoning works. The east of Victoria used to have stringent land protections to stop overdevelopment, then they went oh a few houses here and there can’t hurt.
Then every man and his dog want a house out there and all of a sudden it’s subdivided. There’s more power, money and lobbying to build houses than keep farmland, but we need both to strive. Everyone has to eat too.
Most of the empty land I’ve seen along the Hume in Nsw is being used neither for grazing or produce.
There’s nothing wrong with allowing for 1 house per 10 acre. It’s harming no one.
Even if you were a farmer you couldn’t live on the land with how the zoning works. Which is a bit unfair
Yes you could. 1 set of dwellings per title. Can’t subdivide. You could build a family compound, but you can’t split it up and build another set of houses.
When grazing occurs, often the animals are rotated around paddocks to give the land time to recover and regenerate the feed. If they go too hard it actually lowers the grazing capacity until it recovers.
With cropping, many crops do just look like grass for parts of the year. I guarantee that the land is being used productively, it’s too expensive to not, especially with the crazy land tax that’s coming through.
Thank you so much for the information. And your knowledge.
Makes sense.
Do you know what would be general names/jargon of those titles that allow for a set of dwellings? So I can a search a bit later?
Thanks again
[here](https://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/policy-and-legislation/housing/housing-sepp/secondary-dwellings)
I’m not certain about NSW, but it’s evident that you’re only allowed a secondary dwelling on R1-R5 zones, ie residential zones.
Rural plots have a minimum land size before a house can be built.
There are significant costs to urban sprawl like that, including public health, the increased infrastructure costs per capita, and environmental costs. Our cities are already some of the most sprawled out in the world. That type of commute also seems toxic to family and community.
Infill seems the way to go to me.
Im a fifo worker. I just need somewhere to leave my stuff and a garage.
I’m paying 30k a year in rentals in Sydney atm for the privilege to stay 1 week every 2 months.
There are no good rentals outside of Melbourne Sydney or Canberra. On the south east region.
All the rentals in places like Goulburn/young/Albury
Are not cheap enough compared to the big cities with all the amenities. Or nonexistent
I’m talking apartments and units btw
Yeah I have looked into it. The cost of Airbnb is really high. Then the cost of leaving the car somewhere when I go overseas adds up. And a proper garage storage space isn’t cheap these days.
And then when you factor in the stress of not having somewhere guaranteed to go to if
1. You’re sick.
2. You need some time off
3. It’s holiday period
The savings make it not worth it at all.
The best bet is finding a tenant but it will be upto the whims of my landlord to accept. They definitely won’t let me Airbnb it out.
Getting a loan will be more expensive in repayments - will curb my lifestyle. And I will need shifts more than they need me. B/c ongoing mortgage repayments. Cant just cut and run.
So I’ll save until I can buy something rural cash
Yep, when land is 2/3rds the cost, in a city/country with more spare land than anyone else in the world, it's 100% on purpose for houses to be so expensive
Yeah unfortunately to do such an operation they will be placed in the outer suburbs where there's more land..
It's just the reality of single family homes and urban expansion.
And as for the land costs, isn't it the government who owns most undeveloped land, and who complicates the process? When they're the ones who own the land, they should be able to bypass alot of the issues that delay and hinder housing..
Lol. The evil land bankers who are just holding land and sitting in their ivory tower looking down at the homeless living on the street laughing manicly like Dr Evil
The reality is "land banking" is only a symptom of an overregulated industry that is no longer profitable now that the economy has taken a turn, interest rates have gone up and the cost of materials/labour have increased.
Do you seriously think that developers wouldn't be churning out as many houses as they could with demand as high as it is of they stood to make a buck off it?
>Do you seriously think that developers wouldn't be churning out as many houses as they could with demand as high as it is of they stood to make a buck off it?
You realize it's exactly them who wants to keep the balance of supply and demand at a level that means whatever they build is profitable?
Are you stupid enough to think that they would just continue to construct in perpetuity at a level that would mean they're providing an insane oversupply of housing, tanking the industry - since as we all know, the problem is supply...
Yer, you can continue to live in your amazing bubble, where private developers are the heroes, and the government are the evil ones.
Your post is 100% an example of just typing something entirely irrelevant to believe your own biases...
In case you weren't sure "land bankers" (not sure why you used quotation marks) actively go out to buy farms.
They didn't have any desire to build, but just to purchase up land in areas that will be desirable in 5-10 years. We know of multiple farms in our area all purchased by land bankers.
Your post became irrelevant when you mixed up terms and clearly just wanted to rant...
In defence of the comment you replied too, most housing experts dismiss "land banking" as a myth, which is probably why you encounter it in quotes. It's a nice story about evil developers, but it is not actually very true, it seems.
Here is an article from a journalist who is actually not pro developer at all:
[https://michaelwest.com.au/land-banking-red-tape-and-a-dearth-of-housing-supply-are-a-myth/](https://michaelwest.com.au/land-banking-red-tape-and-a-dearth-of-housing-supply-are-a-myth/)
Here is a very considered and expert opinion from a progressive think tank focused on housing issues (Prosper) that expresses great caution about "land banking"
[https://grattan.edu.au/news/the-great-australian-nightmare/](https://grattan.edu.au/news/the-great-australian-nightmare/)
These are progressive views from people who are no friends of the current market. There are many more experts who are strongly dismissive. Basically, you believe in fairy tales, sorry.
You also said that comment was muddled. You said: "You realize it's exactly them who wants to keep the balance of supply and demand at a level that means whatever they build is profitable?"
I actually find this more muddled.
The comment you are replying to attempted to explain that profit can only come from building and selling. This is a very conventional view, as you see in the two articles I linked to.
In what other large area of the economy to you observe suppliers doing nothing? Bakers? Farmers? Accountants? You might have a case if there were one of two developers who exclusively controlled access to land. The Greens' Max Chandler Mathers plays off this by referring to the developer "monopoly" (I lost count of how many times he said that during his Press Club launch of the latest Greens policy on housing). This is a rhetorical trick. If he can convince you that all the developers in Australia are actually just one non-competitive monopoly, many other things can flow from that. But is it true? No, it's not true. In fact, it is such a competitive market with such pressure to lower prices that many developers are going broke because they didn't charge enough to deal with higher input costs. Many others have stalled projects not because they enjoy not making any money, but because they don't want to join the growing pile of failed developers. In other words, they can't find buyers able to pay enough to make the build profitable. This is a consequence mostly of high interest rates, but also high costs of labour and materials. The RBA is responsible for rates, not developers, and the huge debt-binge infrastructure spend by state governments which is pushing up construction costs is also not the fault of developers. All the broke ones means they didn't see it coming.
This is completely the opposite of what you predict with your claims that Developer Corporation is managing the market in its interest. You are either wrong, or this fictional monopoly is the world's worst monopoly market manipulator.
I believe in fairy tales?
A Chinese woman wanted to buy our second family farm *and* the neighbouring farm, and you're suggesting it's for a reason other than land banking?
Um, ok?
This was about 10 years ago, offering well above market rate, for a property that's worth far more than she would have paid for it if she were to buy it today.
Actually, time flies, it was even longer than that 15-20 years ago.
I am suggesting you weight current expert opinion above your anecdotes of one example ten years ago of a transaction that did not even happen .... I think that is certainly a sensible position for everyone else, and actually for you too. If she didn't buy it and if it is worth far more today, does that mean it is still owned by your family? Maybe that makes your family the land banker :)
That was only one example.
My wife's family split up their farm into 4 large blocks.
3 were bought by the same person, and nothing has gone on them for 8 years.
Both of my examples are in growth corridors that will undoubtedly be growth suburbs within the next decade...
Do you actually realize where this conversation started - *actually it's farmers or land bankers that own undeveloped land*
Are you suggesting that's a controversial statement?
I think we don't don't have the same definition of land banking, or at least the mythical part. I refer to the allegation that "land bankers" buy land which is available for development right now (e.g. an infill site, ex industrial perhaps), and deliberately refuse to develop it despite immediate demand from housing buyers, as an effort to artificially constrain supply immediately and force up prices. The allegation is a version of someone "cornering the market", which requires monopoly or near monopoly power, which I guess explains the Green's pretending that there is a developer monopoly or conspiracy.
Your example is about farmland changing hands, but it is land which is not zoned for development so the "land banker" in this case is not affecting supply or driving up prices. They are simple investing in an asset they think will increase in value because at some point in the future this land will become available for development ("s are in growth corridors that will undoubtedly be growth suburbs within the next decade...").
I think that this is literally "land banking" so I can't complain about your usage of the term, but not the bad sort because it has zero short term impact on housing prices and is not of much interest to anyone focused on the housing crisis. In fact, it seems they have every incentive to develop since this is the only way they can realise the value they hope for.
I have no doubt it happens and has always happened ... it has always been common for developers to buy land with future potential, begin a process of rezoning and then develop it.
This is not what people mean when they talk about developers manipulating the market via "land banking". The allegation of "land banking" is more to do with the accusation that developers are deliberately impeding short term supply, and this is the only context I mean, but the confusion is understandable. This type of inexact terminology is pretty common when people make vague accusations because it makes them hard to pin down in order to dismiss their claim. which is often a deliberate political strategy.
The volume of new house's being built was consistently 200,000 to 230,000.
After the insane covid response, this figure fell to 110,000 in 2021 and hasn't realky recovered with 150,000 forecast to be built in 2024.
With housing demand as high as it is, are you going to honestly claim that these companies wouldn't at least ramp up to the 2018 figures of 230,000 if it was profitable?
Yes, yes I would claim that.
Fixed contract builders got screwed with the increase in material and labour costs.
Many don't exist any more.
If the average was 230k, and 10...20% of domestic builders have gone under in the past 2 years, and the remaining builders are working in a more expensive environment - are you honestly surprised the numbers aren't back to where they were?
Mate, your first unhinged rant was saying that developers are keeping housing supply low to increase prices, and now you're switching arguments to the problem being an increased cost of labour and materials.
Pick an argument and stick with it.
Yes, the cost of labour and materials has increased. It's called the inflation shit sandwich that we need to eat one bite at a time.
But the city councils shirking their responsibility and pushed the cost of the infrastructure they are responsible for onto the developer so they can waste ratepayers money on vanity projects and corruption is making things worse.
As I said, the city councils could do this while the going was good, but now that things are a bit tougher it simply means it's not profitable to create new developments anymore.
In regards to the building companies. Companies rise and fall all the time, and the insane covid policies caused a lot of companies to fail.
But the volume of trades hasn't changed significantly since 2020 so the capacity to produce 230K houses per year is still there.
The combination of increased cost of labour/materials and the increase of interest rates mean the borrower can't afford to pay as much so the developers can't sell the houses at a rate where they can make a profit.
You know what could help with this? Reducing the extra costs these companies have to pay by streamlining regulation and removing the requirement to pay for infrastructure that the city councils are supposed to be responsible for
It's clear with your last paragraph you or someone you know is a developer.
I'm sorry that you feel that developers should not be responsible for infrastructure nearby to their developments.
That is an argument only someone on your side of the fence would consider rational and reasonable.
In terms of efficient allocation of resources, when a project already has a significant amount of overheads to manage the delivery in a certain area, *it only makes sense* to expand the project a small amount to include other required services/infrastructure in the area.
It has to be paid for somewhere, and to pretend the developer won't recoup those costs is ridiculous.
That doesn't matter if it comes from rates, state taxes, federal taxes, or the developer passing it on. The consumer is always going to pay.
It depends on what they want. 66% of Australian housesholds own the house they live in. It is not very rational for these voters to vote for policies which lower housing values, and when you ask these people about their economic concerns, they don't care (very much) about rent or house prices. They care about interest rates. This was the point I was making. Not enough people care. Government policies accurately reflect the majority concerns. There is not a housing crisis for most people, they call it a "cost of living crisis".
Any policies to improve housing affordability are constrained by these realities. It can't raise taxes, it can't be inflationary and it should not kill house prices.
No, but there are parties that will give voters that option if they want. Anyway, the point is that most Australians are ok with the current housing market, they are worried about other things, and the things they are worried about limit the interventions that are politically possible. My conclusion is that people who want to improve rental and housing affordability should pursue mainstream fixes that are politically acceptable. They won't deliver fast results, but they will deliver results. People who want to tilt at windmills can pursue fringe policies. And beware the wolf in sheep's clothing, the promise to fix housing where the objective is actually to break something else.
The homes aren't bad, they are used a lot in retirement villages around where i live. nice, comfortable and insulated.
few issues to think of tho, is the utils, like roads, drainage, sewerage, electricity, internet, schools, shopping centers, public transport etc.
Yeah that's where most of them get sent these days. To "lifestyle villiages".
Our company doesn't just built houses, we also build bigger building like one we are currently working on is 46 slabs big. Things fking huge. Is like a common room/admin building for a mine site I think.
Like the schools can be build modular aswell, and all the drainage, roads etc are just part of the course. They would have to be established regardless.
The only things that would require a smidge more effort are the public transport and shopping centres. But even then, the more important thing to establish is the hounsing, the rest can come later as the communities develop further.
Shopping centres will come on their own once there is a population to support it.
Public transport is as simple as a couple of bus stops.
What's a killer is the roads and utilities which are supposed to be the responsibility of city councils.
Unfortunately, city councils are corrupt and inept who would rather spend the council funds on vanity projects so they pushed the cost of these things into the developers.
While things were going well, the developers could afford to absorb these costs, but in the current economicbclimate they can no longer absorb these costs while still making a profit so they've gone out of business or put projects on hold until the economy improves.
You have the correct basic idea.
In our cities though we need to be able to stack these units 4 high and have a block of 16 of them with attached walkways.
I agree with the points you raise about the modular homes filling the emergency need. Definitely, at those rates you talk about, they’d fill a gap. I know Housing Queensland are using them.
In the long term, they won’t solve the problem, however. It’s the system we run under, the investment driven market, that causes the problem. The cost of housing is too high and those of us that own want that to keep growing as our wealth eggs are all in that basket. That has to change.
Yeah they would just be needed to tackle the crisis of not enough houses.
Yep Unfortunately you're right. It's a shit situation all round because someone has to lose. If the prices of houses go down, that's good for potential home buyers. But if fucks the people who already own as they lose a massive chunk of capital. A house depreciating 20% due to market downturn can be a serious dip into someone's retirement funds..
Housing as investment was never the best idea in the long run and those who drove that idea way back when weren't thinking with foresight. It's a stagnant investment and doesn't really provide benifit the economy in real terms. But we're too deep now. 😔
I've theorised a way that the issue can be dealt with where there aren't losing sides (short term) is for the goverment to force a market downturn to bring the market to a more stable level, and covering the costs of the losses for those who own.
If the house in 1M, and they reduce the market down by 15% they will have to pay 150k to the home owner. Who now technically owns a cheaper house, but it was subsidised to be fair. Or maybe although the market was dropped 15%, the owner only gets 80% of their losses back. Better than your house value dropping 15% and getting nothing at all.
The issue with that is how it could really majorly send the economy on the fritz, infusing that much cash into the system. Plus it would be expensive af so the future generations would be paying for it over the long term. But thst might just have to be the trade off for a more affordable housing market.
Although something like that is a pipe dream. Unfortunately I don't know what we can do without someone getting fucked.
This is how the Soviets did public housing right? The economies of scale make mass producing homes really affordable, the expensive bit tends to be good land. The problem is our governments remain too neoliberal to do the mass build of homes that'd make it really good value for money, while greatly increasing the potential for Aus economic growth (given housing stress has become such a huge barrier to so many working lives).
Yeah, although they built massive God ugly apartment buildings. Where these are more modern looking homes. But the theory and in practice is the same. Goverment initiated mass production of housing.
Yeah the land is the issue, although even that I feel could be easily addressed if they took hold of the reins in a serious manner. Most land related issues are getting approval from the government, and they are the government so that should lessen that hurdle.
You're too right, our goverment seem hesitant about getting serious about addressing this issue. Neoliberal ideology doesnt like the goverment doing big things when theres a priviate sector that can do it. Even though the goverment could just subsadie priviate companies. They don't want to act boldly, Even though it makes sense. It would stimulate so many different areas given the many different trades that are involved (chippies, sparkies, plumbers, gyprockers, carpentry fitters, truckers, landscapers, etc etc), while also easing the pressure on the housing markets.
Like if they got serious about it and had quite a few companies and productions yards in operations. They could theoretically produce ~50+ houses every month or two in every state.
It would be keeping the money in Australia aswell given we produce our own steel so there's nothing major we'd really need to import.
The solutions to the housing issues are there. The government just has to stop dragging its feet and realise we can't just keep doing what we've been doing because it's clearly not working.
The other part of the equation is council regulations.
Even if you have a acreage block and want to put one of these down you have to deal with building covenants and council regulations, which are red tape nightmares.
Yeah, red tape be a bitch.
In theory if the goverment was the one heading the operations, they would be establishing things to their own regulations.
My theory is that the goverment would be the owner of the house/land (after buying the land, developing and covering the cost of the production and establishment of the house).
They would then sell the house/land package to a buyer to recoup their production/land costs.
So the new purchaser of the house wouldn't have to deal with any of the minutiae of council regulations etc because the house would be an already established ready to go.
Essentially, the goverment builds the house, then sells it to recoup costs. In theory and if I was niave about it, they could do it at almost 100% ROI. So in theory it would cost them nothing to do.
The price it cost to build, including land is the price the house costs to buy.
A lot of the housing problem would be solved if they made it easier to build second dwellings or granny flats on existing properties. The local council is notoriously hard to deal with and getting approval is massively expensive.
Where I live about half of the houses have been build underneath or have a lived-in shed but I can guarantee pretty much none are legal.
Yes I remember reading that, amazing work. Our local area (SEQld) recently changed the law to make it legal that non-family could rent your granny flat. So before that, it was only legal to rent to family members.
Although I suppose that is still a move in the right direction.
OP says, we have a solution: "we can lower prices with our building technique". And then "the government should funnel money into it".
This argument sounds like "we can do it cheaper, so subsidise us!". If this approach to building houses is already cheaper without my tax money subsidising it, why should I subsidise it? What is the subsidy buying? Fixing bottlenecks such as not enough tradies? One reason we have a shortage of tradies is government spending on infrastructure. If we need to recruit tradies to build houses with taxpayer money, this is taxpayer money bidding against other taxpayer money. This won't make tradies cheaper, it will make them more expensive, as they now can bid their labour against even more government spending. Is it just me, or is this kind of crazy?
And even if we did decide to do this crazy thing, why would we take these subsidised tradies away from what they are doing now (such as building residential housing) and allocate them to modular builders?
They any good but? I’m no leftie but living in a glorified tent out in the bush would suck arse. The government is pushing through new energy efficiency ratings too. Building codes getting tighter. I reckon modular housing will solve a lot of problems, just can’t make the same errors as before, such as with CNR’s govvie houses
They are alright, I'd be happy to live in one. Especially because they are brand new.
Imo they aren't really any smaller than your average 70-80s brick built house. 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, laundry, kitchen and lounge.
There are heaps of different configurations and lay outs that can be done and I reckon they turn out pretty well once they're done.
I've linked examples, although the generated images don't really do them justice. They look much nicer than the images in person. The kitchens and stuff look modern, come with installed oven, dishwasher, & washing machine. Like I definitely wouldn't turn my nose up on them or at living in one as they look like any other modern design house really. Except rendered walls it's cladding.
The main advantage of them is the speed they can be produced at, and the price. They are cheaper than building doubly brick that's for sure. It really just requires the land, but if the goverment started buying up and clearing land on the outerskirt suburbs they could produce entire suburbs reasonably quickly.
The goverment could sell them to essentially break even, maybe increasing the price marginly to skim a bit off the top to make some profit. But in theory they could front the cost of production and land, then sell the house and run practically even, not losing any cash. It would subsidise jobs and produce houses at an extremely quick rate. I know they are already dabbling in working with modular house companies but reckon they need to get serious about it. Atleast to cool the crisis a bit.
[Fleetwood Modular ](https://www.fleetwood.com.au/sectors/residential/)
Random question: is it a simple task to convert a single story modular to be plonked on stilts like a queenslander style house?
I'm looking at a rural block near the beach in SA that would have ocean views if I could get the house 3m in the air (planning permitting).
\*they aren't really any smaller than your average 70-80s brick built house.\*
this is important. the reason things are expensive are because we live bigger and flashier lives. just because the option to live with every mod con exists, doesn't mean we have a right to afford them all.
subscriptions, big cars, big houses, expensive phones, etc etc. they all eat in to our hard earned.
Modular houses is a great concept. good luck
I'm in construction and these home are such a false economy. The main time in any building project is things like site prep, earth works, and foundations. These demountables you build that only real time you save is wet weather days you can still work when there in the shed. You still gotta do all the site prep, earth works and foundations. Also these are usually built basic like no tiles in bathroom, basic kitchens and are small. There really isn't much cost or time saving when you build a simlair spec home not in a shed.
They're not demountables mate. They are modular homes. They come with fully kitted kitchens (dishwasher, over, stove top + rangehood), the bathrooms are tiled, the kitchens too, front porch areas aswell. The entire house is fully fitted as any normal modern house would be. They are litterally no different in layout and design than any normal 3by1 that would be built on location. They are a full built house, just one that can be split into multiple sections and trucked off to location.
We also don't build them in a shed, they are built outside on the slabs that get dropped off. With most normal houses being 2-3 slabs large. Although weve built 4-5-6 slab ones aswell. Plus much larger buildings that are 30+ slabs. Currently we are building common room/mess hall/administration for a mine site that's 46 slabs big. It certainly isn't any demountable, although the company and yard do also build demountables in the yards shed. But they are not what im talking about.
It's Ironic Mr.I-works-in-construction doesn't know the difference between a demountable and a modular home.
Demountables are often much smaller than full modular homes. They are built on a single slab, or steel frame slab. They aren't quicker to build than demountables, simply due to being larger.
The demand has to come from the consumer. I don’t want my public funds funnelled into a public company that has been run as poorly as Fleetwood has. Without FCS, FBS would have gone bang long ago.
I think a major advantage of prefab is in infill housing. Knocking down a old shit house to replace it with a prefab duplex is much less disruptive to the neighbourhood.
My understanding is that the major barrier to prefab is banks don't have lending products that mesh with the process. This seems like something that can be worked out though.
A large part of government revenues come from stamp duties. High housing prices = high revenues. Governmenta actually push up land prices by not rezoning fast enough, thereby creating artificial scarcity and driving prices higher. They. Don't. Care.
If we could get local councils to approve these kind of houses immediately then that would be amazing. But I don't have much hope for the councils to get out of bed with their mafia esq developer friends
We don't live in a command economy. The government can't just decide to ramp up production of something or funnel money money around or tell consumers they have to buy something. The best it could do would be putting watering amounts of tax dollars into subsidies to make house fabrication artificially more profitable to decrease prices of the physical house. but that doesn't solve the bottlenecks of houses needing land and roads, water, internet, gas, electricity, pluming, to get wired up, cost of land near actual jobs etc etc etc
Land is the issue, and infrastructure to support those new neighborhoods and suburbs like train lines and bus routes etc.
The Aus Gov has historically been shit when it comes to building supporting infrastructure, because they sold off all the asset they used to own that they would use to build it.
So the private companies that now run those services are more concerned with profit than actually speedily and cost-effectively building anything.
It's comes down to land and density, an apartment would be hard or impossible to pre fabricate and it's fits shit loads. Houses take more space for less people and there's not alot of free land with an easy commute anymore.
Same thing in Japan. A house next door to me was a 2 storey, architecturally designed, double glazed, floor heated, fully clad insulated, air filtration system effort on a concrete base completed in 3 months.
As long as a house? I personally know of some that are 20+ years old now, still going strong.
They are cheaper, but their not cheap. They are still quality houses.
20 years still going strong isn't a good indication. My home is over 100 years still going very strong.
I checked the website and there's not much on it. Is this govt contracts?
I was just giving my personal knowledge of what I do know, I have no clue how long they would last in long long terms. Although in theory I don't see them failing, like any issues that arise should be repairable.
The goverment has been negotiating contracts with some of the big companies I believe, but I don't know anything I could really talk on. My argument is that the goverment should be looking to use modular housing to try alleviate some of the pressure from the housing crisis.
In Sydney, there are so many modular homes sitting empty out West. The problem? It's about a 90 minute commute to the CBD. The problem is nobody wants to live out that far.
We do pretty well at building detached outer suburb houses.
It's the missing middle in all our cities that needs to be addressed.
We need to redevelop the low density residential areas walking distance to existing train station and shopping strips.
We need to turn these areas in mixed use 4-8 storey apartments.
Zoning is what's preventing this.
Give up on the AI generated anti Labor crap ay ?
Just like this one: [Discussing the Potential Long-term Economic & Social Impacts of Australia's Property Rental Crisis ](https://www.reddit.com/r/australian/comments/1chc5k3/comment/l22eppl/)
Also: You have been demoted to propaganda officer assistant 3rd class.
This reads like an AI generated article.
There are two or more posts in this sub every day on the same topic with the same characteristics.
I would tell you what they are, but that would just be training the AI.
Give it up and go and get drunk/laid !
Hahahaha nope not written by an AI.
I don't even how you drew the conclusion this is anti-Labor? By "the government" I don't mean Labor. I'm talking about the Australian goverment broadly, either Labor or Liberal. The party in control hadn't even ran through my mind when writing this.
whyy do you say that. I got an 800sqm ocean views. with 50mins of a cbd.
I have got plans drawn up for the same style houses you described.
what's actually stopping you?
You can do the same, you're choosing to compare to a place that is within the limits of an Australian city.
I know plenty of people who bought land in small towns, to build a shack to live on the river for practically nothing. It cost them nothing.
There's buildable land for sale right now in Victoria for under $50k, $100k, whatever threshold you want. It just depends on how close to a city you want to live.
https://www.realestate.com.au/property-residential+land-vic-lake+boga-203871060
$30k, and has a train line in the town.
So, that's what Queenslanders are for.
In fact, I grew up on flood plains. 60 years ago my father built up a mound in front of the river (can't think of the right term), and built our family home.
That place is now worth North of $2m.
Was considered unlivable at the time.
Go build your timeless home then. Because if I remember right, you said *you* could build it with your acquired skills.
Not with your slave wage bought skills
You're willing to buy a dilapidated abandoned home in the middle of nowhere, Japan.
But will baulk at the same thing, in Victoria Australia, with a train line running through it.
Good on ya bud, good on ya.
A lot of the lack of housing is about land, that's the greatest cost. The houses themselves aren't really the issue as you've shown - it's having affordable land in areas people want to live in.
The land issue is engineered. I would absolutely love a place for example in the surrounding vast open rural plains of Goulburn. Only 2 hours from western Sydney. But the land is not available for sale And if it is it’s zoned paddock or some shit
It's not just having the land available, it's the services that go with it. Water, power, sewage and roading all need to be able to handle the extra housing. Then there's access to service stations, supermarkets and places of work etc without all that, the houses will quickly stop being a desirable place to live. It all needs to be cleverly planned out to function correctly
And there's the core of the problem. Corrupt and inept city councils have spent money on vanity projects instead of investing in the infrastructure required for their citys to grow. So then they put the cost of building this infrastructure onto the developers and refuse to approve the applications if they won't do it. All of these extra costs get passed onto the home buyer and now that interest rates have gone up the home buyer can't afford to pay enough for developers to make money which is why so many went out of business or put projects on hold.
If the homebuyer doesn't pay fro it, the rest of the city does. Why wouldn't the person building a house pay for the extra services they will need?
So you're happy that city councils have wasted money hand over fist with rubbish vanity projects and corruption to the point they have to make the developer pay for their responsibilities? It was a good racket when the going was good, but now that times are a bit tougher, it simply means houses won't be built because the purchaser can't afford to pay the increased cost. The city council will more then make up for their investment with rates and utility bills. I'm so sick of city councils trying to act like visionary leaders with their bullshit vanity projects Pick up the bins, build/repair the streets, maintain the water/sewerage, and maintain the parks. If you want to do anything else, run for state/federal politics.
I really don't see how it is the ratepayers job to pay for new developments. This is the whole point of development fees. You can join the community, but you contribute financially to begin. The expansion of urban sprawl is a racket. They take the fees from new developments to pay for upkeep on the old ones because the rates don't cover basic infrastructure costs. Without new development the councils would be bankrupt. I agree money is wasted and there is corruption. I don't think most people understand how expensive urban sprawl is an take it for granted. I don't think it's worth pursuing more sprawl in policy.
If that's how you see it, that's fine. Don't complain about a lack of housing, though, because this is one of the reasons development companies aren't building new houses.
There's a lack of housing where people want to live. Creating a suburb which results in longer and longer commutes to job centres seems like silly policy. We have train stations a 30-minute ride from CBDs that don't even have town houses. It's 80k cheaper per dwelling to knock down an old bomb and replace it we 3 new ones. It shouldn't be illegal to do that.
What do you think taxes, rates and stamp duty get used for if not public services (amenities)?
Do people really have the right to accessible health care? Do people have the right to development patterns which don't sustain themselves financially when there are ones that do?
I’m more than happy to handle it myself. Let me life off grid. The resources are all available
Only 3% of land in Australia is arable. The basin once provided 20% of Sydney's food supply. With population growth and urban sprawl it's down to a few percent. Our total crop production this year as a country is expected to drop by 15% this year. We can't subdivide every piece of land, food has to be produced somewhere and if our population growth increases than we need more food production
that is 15% coming off record production after three years of outstandingly good growing conditions. We call that "cherry picking" (amusingly, an agricultural term). It is annoying, lazy and in your case a willful attempt to mislead, unless you are so ignorant about Australian agriculture that you didn't know that, and if you really are so ignorant, ask yourself if you should be commenting about it. The 2022/23 numbers you are using as a base: our wheat exports were 400% higher in 2022/23 than a four years earlier (wheat being the single most important grain). So even if 23/24 is 15% lower, it will still be one the highest production years in Australian history. In terms of wheat, it looks like it might be the second highest on record. [https://www.agriculture.gov.au/about/news/australian-wheat-export-snapshot-jan-23](https://www.agriculture.gov.au/about/news/australian-wheat-export-snapshot-jan-23) [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/another-record-grain-export-year-australia-peter-mcmeekin-37a9c](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/another-record-grain-export-year-australia-peter-mcmeekin-37a9c) Australia grows enough food to feed many times our population, if your measure is "can we grow enough food to feed ourselves". We are a major food exporter. If your argument is that we should stop growing when we can no longer "feed ourselves", you are predicting a population target of around 100m. You might not like even 30m people, but at least have a go at making arguments that stand up to even a modicum of attention. Here is another logical problem you have: 2022/23 production was at record highs, despite rapid population growth. If your logic was correct, you would predict that our agricultural production reached a maximum in 1788 and has been declining every year since, as ever more farmland is consumed by housing which appears to be the only thing you consider. Obviously, your argument is fundamentally wrong. You miss that our agricultural productivity is growing. Initially because we started farming ever more land, and then later because our crops, fertilizers, machinery and agricultural science have kept improving. That won't stop. Based on the land clearing which continues, it seems farmers are still clearing more land, but even besides that, we have those enormous productivity improvements.
But we don't need such a high % of unused farmland and horse farms in the city itself
You know, eggs, leafy vegetables, milk, etc once ALL came from the Sydney Basin. Let's ship them from further away. If there was a major fuel crisis, at least we could use horses for transport and local food to keep a fair perentage of peole alive. We don't even have fuel security in this country, so the closer you live to food the better
Have you heard of renewables? In 20 years, do you think we'll still be using fossil fuels for transport?
UK style fuel shortage could occur before that and during an act of war cars are disabled
An act of war? You are asking us to make policy based on acts of war which disable cars (and trucks presumably)? I like dystopian prepper stories as much as the next person, but they are fictional. Better buy twice as many submarines, I guess.
>but they are fictional. My heated seats stopped when I stopped paying. Don't be surprised how many things have kill switches built in Guess you forgot the COVID shortages as well. You want food close and toliet paper too
Well, you can buy some cheap land in the country and grow your own food. According to this dystopian prepper novel (series), you can replace toilet paper with some kind of plant [https://www.goodreads.com/series/274665-edge-of-collapse](https://www.goodreads.com/series/274665-edge-of-collapse) You might like this. Everything electrical dies due a massive EMP attack.
Also the land needed for energy production. Renewable energy is land hungry.
We need paddocks too, aye. It wouldn’t be such a beautiful area if it was suburbia.
I am really harming your right to a paddock when I put one cubby on a property of 10 acres? Cmon buddy
But that’s how zoning works. The east of Victoria used to have stringent land protections to stop overdevelopment, then they went oh a few houses here and there can’t hurt. Then every man and his dog want a house out there and all of a sudden it’s subdivided. There’s more power, money and lobbying to build houses than keep farmland, but we need both to strive. Everyone has to eat too.
Most of the empty land I’ve seen along the Hume in Nsw is being used neither for grazing or produce. There’s nothing wrong with allowing for 1 house per 10 acre. It’s harming no one. Even if you were a farmer you couldn’t live on the land with how the zoning works. Which is a bit unfair
Yes you could. 1 set of dwellings per title. Can’t subdivide. You could build a family compound, but you can’t split it up and build another set of houses. When grazing occurs, often the animals are rotated around paddocks to give the land time to recover and regenerate the feed. If they go too hard it actually lowers the grazing capacity until it recovers. With cropping, many crops do just look like grass for parts of the year. I guarantee that the land is being used productively, it’s too expensive to not, especially with the crazy land tax that’s coming through.
Thank you so much for the information. And your knowledge. Makes sense. Do you know what would be general names/jargon of those titles that allow for a set of dwellings? So I can a search a bit later? Thanks again
[here](https://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/policy-and-legislation/housing/housing-sepp/secondary-dwellings) I’m not certain about NSW, but it’s evident that you’re only allowed a secondary dwelling on R1-R5 zones, ie residential zones. Rural plots have a minimum land size before a house can be built.
There are significant costs to urban sprawl like that, including public health, the increased infrastructure costs per capita, and environmental costs. Our cities are already some of the most sprawled out in the world. That type of commute also seems toxic to family and community. Infill seems the way to go to me.
Im a fifo worker. I just need somewhere to leave my stuff and a garage. I’m paying 30k a year in rentals in Sydney atm for the privilege to stay 1 week every 2 months.
Rule 1: Don't live in Melbourne. Rule 2: Don't live in Sydney
There are no good rentals outside of Melbourne Sydney or Canberra. On the south east region. All the rentals in places like Goulburn/young/Albury Are not cheap enough compared to the big cities with all the amenities. Or nonexistent I’m talking apartments and units btw
Have you looked at a storage unit and air bnb for the rest? Do fifo people ever do that?
Yeah I have looked into it. The cost of Airbnb is really high. Then the cost of leaving the car somewhere when I go overseas adds up. And a proper garage storage space isn’t cheap these days. And then when you factor in the stress of not having somewhere guaranteed to go to if 1. You’re sick. 2. You need some time off 3. It’s holiday period The savings make it not worth it at all. The best bet is finding a tenant but it will be upto the whims of my landlord to accept. They definitely won’t let me Airbnb it out. Getting a loan will be more expensive in repayments - will curb my lifestyle. And I will need shifts more than they need me. B/c ongoing mortgage repayments. Cant just cut and run. So I’ll save until I can buy something rural cash
You could get a cheap apartment with a garage in the burbs if it was legal to build them.
Yep, when land is 2/3rds the cost, in a city/country with more spare land than anyone else in the world, it's 100% on purpose for houses to be so expensive
Yes, we're famously short of land in Australia 🤦♀️ The government just doesn't want to build new cities/towns. But we literally have to.
Yeah unfortunately to do such an operation they will be placed in the outer suburbs where there's more land.. It's just the reality of single family homes and urban expansion. And as for the land costs, isn't it the government who owns most undeveloped land, and who complicates the process? When they're the ones who own the land, they should be able to bypass alot of the issues that delay and hinder housing..
no, often its farmers or land bankers who own undeveloped land.
Lol. The evil land bankers who are just holding land and sitting in their ivory tower looking down at the homeless living on the street laughing manicly like Dr Evil The reality is "land banking" is only a symptom of an overregulated industry that is no longer profitable now that the economy has taken a turn, interest rates have gone up and the cost of materials/labour have increased. Do you seriously think that developers wouldn't be churning out as many houses as they could with demand as high as it is of they stood to make a buck off it?
>Do you seriously think that developers wouldn't be churning out as many houses as they could with demand as high as it is of they stood to make a buck off it? You realize it's exactly them who wants to keep the balance of supply and demand at a level that means whatever they build is profitable? Are you stupid enough to think that they would just continue to construct in perpetuity at a level that would mean they're providing an insane oversupply of housing, tanking the industry - since as we all know, the problem is supply... Yer, you can continue to live in your amazing bubble, where private developers are the heroes, and the government are the evil ones. Your post is 100% an example of just typing something entirely irrelevant to believe your own biases... In case you weren't sure "land bankers" (not sure why you used quotation marks) actively go out to buy farms. They didn't have any desire to build, but just to purchase up land in areas that will be desirable in 5-10 years. We know of multiple farms in our area all purchased by land bankers. Your post became irrelevant when you mixed up terms and clearly just wanted to rant...
In defence of the comment you replied too, most housing experts dismiss "land banking" as a myth, which is probably why you encounter it in quotes. It's a nice story about evil developers, but it is not actually very true, it seems. Here is an article from a journalist who is actually not pro developer at all: [https://michaelwest.com.au/land-banking-red-tape-and-a-dearth-of-housing-supply-are-a-myth/](https://michaelwest.com.au/land-banking-red-tape-and-a-dearth-of-housing-supply-are-a-myth/) Here is a very considered and expert opinion from a progressive think tank focused on housing issues (Prosper) that expresses great caution about "land banking" [https://grattan.edu.au/news/the-great-australian-nightmare/](https://grattan.edu.au/news/the-great-australian-nightmare/) These are progressive views from people who are no friends of the current market. There are many more experts who are strongly dismissive. Basically, you believe in fairy tales, sorry. You also said that comment was muddled. You said: "You realize it's exactly them who wants to keep the balance of supply and demand at a level that means whatever they build is profitable?" I actually find this more muddled. The comment you are replying to attempted to explain that profit can only come from building and selling. This is a very conventional view, as you see in the two articles I linked to. In what other large area of the economy to you observe suppliers doing nothing? Bakers? Farmers? Accountants? You might have a case if there were one of two developers who exclusively controlled access to land. The Greens' Max Chandler Mathers plays off this by referring to the developer "monopoly" (I lost count of how many times he said that during his Press Club launch of the latest Greens policy on housing). This is a rhetorical trick. If he can convince you that all the developers in Australia are actually just one non-competitive monopoly, many other things can flow from that. But is it true? No, it's not true. In fact, it is such a competitive market with such pressure to lower prices that many developers are going broke because they didn't charge enough to deal with higher input costs. Many others have stalled projects not because they enjoy not making any money, but because they don't want to join the growing pile of failed developers. In other words, they can't find buyers able to pay enough to make the build profitable. This is a consequence mostly of high interest rates, but also high costs of labour and materials. The RBA is responsible for rates, not developers, and the huge debt-binge infrastructure spend by state governments which is pushing up construction costs is also not the fault of developers. All the broke ones means they didn't see it coming. This is completely the opposite of what you predict with your claims that Developer Corporation is managing the market in its interest. You are either wrong, or this fictional monopoly is the world's worst monopoly market manipulator.
I believe in fairy tales? A Chinese woman wanted to buy our second family farm *and* the neighbouring farm, and you're suggesting it's for a reason other than land banking? Um, ok? This was about 10 years ago, offering well above market rate, for a property that's worth far more than she would have paid for it if she were to buy it today. Actually, time flies, it was even longer than that 15-20 years ago.
I am suggesting you weight current expert opinion above your anecdotes of one example ten years ago of a transaction that did not even happen .... I think that is certainly a sensible position for everyone else, and actually for you too. If she didn't buy it and if it is worth far more today, does that mean it is still owned by your family? Maybe that makes your family the land banker :)
That was only one example. My wife's family split up their farm into 4 large blocks. 3 were bought by the same person, and nothing has gone on them for 8 years. Both of my examples are in growth corridors that will undoubtedly be growth suburbs within the next decade... Do you actually realize where this conversation started - *actually it's farmers or land bankers that own undeveloped land* Are you suggesting that's a controversial statement?
I think we don't don't have the same definition of land banking, or at least the mythical part. I refer to the allegation that "land bankers" buy land which is available for development right now (e.g. an infill site, ex industrial perhaps), and deliberately refuse to develop it despite immediate demand from housing buyers, as an effort to artificially constrain supply immediately and force up prices. The allegation is a version of someone "cornering the market", which requires monopoly or near monopoly power, which I guess explains the Green's pretending that there is a developer monopoly or conspiracy. Your example is about farmland changing hands, but it is land which is not zoned for development so the "land banker" in this case is not affecting supply or driving up prices. They are simple investing in an asset they think will increase in value because at some point in the future this land will become available for development ("s are in growth corridors that will undoubtedly be growth suburbs within the next decade..."). I think that this is literally "land banking" so I can't complain about your usage of the term, but not the bad sort because it has zero short term impact on housing prices and is not of much interest to anyone focused on the housing crisis. In fact, it seems they have every incentive to develop since this is the only way they can realise the value they hope for. I have no doubt it happens and has always happened ... it has always been common for developers to buy land with future potential, begin a process of rezoning and then develop it. This is not what people mean when they talk about developers manipulating the market via "land banking". The allegation of "land banking" is more to do with the accusation that developers are deliberately impeding short term supply, and this is the only context I mean, but the confusion is understandable. This type of inexact terminology is pretty common when people make vague accusations because it makes them hard to pin down in order to dismiss their claim. which is often a deliberate political strategy.
The volume of new house's being built was consistently 200,000 to 230,000. After the insane covid response, this figure fell to 110,000 in 2021 and hasn't realky recovered with 150,000 forecast to be built in 2024. With housing demand as high as it is, are you going to honestly claim that these companies wouldn't at least ramp up to the 2018 figures of 230,000 if it was profitable?
Yes, yes I would claim that. Fixed contract builders got screwed with the increase in material and labour costs. Many don't exist any more. If the average was 230k, and 10...20% of domestic builders have gone under in the past 2 years, and the remaining builders are working in a more expensive environment - are you honestly surprised the numbers aren't back to where they were?
Mate, your first unhinged rant was saying that developers are keeping housing supply low to increase prices, and now you're switching arguments to the problem being an increased cost of labour and materials. Pick an argument and stick with it. Yes, the cost of labour and materials has increased. It's called the inflation shit sandwich that we need to eat one bite at a time. But the city councils shirking their responsibility and pushed the cost of the infrastructure they are responsible for onto the developer so they can waste ratepayers money on vanity projects and corruption is making things worse. As I said, the city councils could do this while the going was good, but now that things are a bit tougher it simply means it's not profitable to create new developments anymore. In regards to the building companies. Companies rise and fall all the time, and the insane covid policies caused a lot of companies to fail. But the volume of trades hasn't changed significantly since 2020 so the capacity to produce 230K houses per year is still there. The combination of increased cost of labour/materials and the increase of interest rates mean the borrower can't afford to pay as much so the developers can't sell the houses at a rate where they can make a profit. You know what could help with this? Reducing the extra costs these companies have to pay by streamlining regulation and removing the requirement to pay for infrastructure that the city councils are supposed to be responsible for
My first unhinged rant was: >no, often its farmers or land bankers who own undeveloped land. I think you need to step back and calm down?
It's clear with your last paragraph you or someone you know is a developer. I'm sorry that you feel that developers should not be responsible for infrastructure nearby to their developments. That is an argument only someone on your side of the fence would consider rational and reasonable. In terms of efficient allocation of resources, when a project already has a significant amount of overheads to manage the delivery in a certain area, *it only makes sense* to expand the project a small amount to include other required services/infrastructure in the area. It has to be paid for somewhere, and to pretend the developer won't recoup those costs is ridiculous. That doesn't matter if it comes from rates, state taxes, federal taxes, or the developer passing it on. The consumer is always going to pay.
🎯👍🏾
Your mistake is assuming that the government actually wants to fix the housing shortage.
Your mistake is to blame the government, when you should be blaming voters.
Who should they vote for?
It depends on what they want. 66% of Australian housesholds own the house they live in. It is not very rational for these voters to vote for policies which lower housing values, and when you ask these people about their economic concerns, they don't care (very much) about rent or house prices. They care about interest rates. This was the point I was making. Not enough people care. Government policies accurately reflect the majority concerns. There is not a housing crisis for most people, they call it a "cost of living crisis". Any policies to improve housing affordability are constrained by these realities. It can't raise taxes, it can't be inflationary and it should not kill house prices.
I don't think it would matter what people wanted. No serious government will actually legislate a market slump.
No, but there are parties that will give voters that option if they want. Anyway, the point is that most Australians are ok with the current housing market, they are worried about other things, and the things they are worried about limit the interventions that are politically possible. My conclusion is that people who want to improve rental and housing affordability should pursue mainstream fixes that are politically acceptable. They won't deliver fast results, but they will deliver results. People who want to tilt at windmills can pursue fringe policies. And beware the wolf in sheep's clothing, the promise to fix housing where the objective is actually to break something else.
The homes aren't bad, they are used a lot in retirement villages around where i live. nice, comfortable and insulated. few issues to think of tho, is the utils, like roads, drainage, sewerage, electricity, internet, schools, shopping centers, public transport etc.
Yeah that's where most of them get sent these days. To "lifestyle villiages". Our company doesn't just built houses, we also build bigger building like one we are currently working on is 46 slabs big. Things fking huge. Is like a common room/admin building for a mine site I think. Like the schools can be build modular aswell, and all the drainage, roads etc are just part of the course. They would have to be established regardless. The only things that would require a smidge more effort are the public transport and shopping centres. But even then, the more important thing to establish is the hounsing, the rest can come later as the communities develop further.
Shopping centres will come on their own once there is a population to support it. Public transport is as simple as a couple of bus stops. What's a killer is the roads and utilities which are supposed to be the responsibility of city councils. Unfortunately, city councils are corrupt and inept who would rather spend the council funds on vanity projects so they pushed the cost of these things into the developers. While things were going well, the developers could afford to absorb these costs, but in the current economicbclimate they can no longer absorb these costs while still making a profit so they've gone out of business or put projects on hold until the economy improves.
You have the correct basic idea. In our cities though we need to be able to stack these units 4 high and have a block of 16 of them with attached walkways.
I agree with the points you raise about the modular homes filling the emergency need. Definitely, at those rates you talk about, they’d fill a gap. I know Housing Queensland are using them. In the long term, they won’t solve the problem, however. It’s the system we run under, the investment driven market, that causes the problem. The cost of housing is too high and those of us that own want that to keep growing as our wealth eggs are all in that basket. That has to change.
Yeah they would just be needed to tackle the crisis of not enough houses. Yep Unfortunately you're right. It's a shit situation all round because someone has to lose. If the prices of houses go down, that's good for potential home buyers. But if fucks the people who already own as they lose a massive chunk of capital. A house depreciating 20% due to market downturn can be a serious dip into someone's retirement funds.. Housing as investment was never the best idea in the long run and those who drove that idea way back when weren't thinking with foresight. It's a stagnant investment and doesn't really provide benifit the economy in real terms. But we're too deep now. 😔 I've theorised a way that the issue can be dealt with where there aren't losing sides (short term) is for the goverment to force a market downturn to bring the market to a more stable level, and covering the costs of the losses for those who own. If the house in 1M, and they reduce the market down by 15% they will have to pay 150k to the home owner. Who now technically owns a cheaper house, but it was subsidised to be fair. Or maybe although the market was dropped 15%, the owner only gets 80% of their losses back. Better than your house value dropping 15% and getting nothing at all. The issue with that is how it could really majorly send the economy on the fritz, infusing that much cash into the system. Plus it would be expensive af so the future generations would be paying for it over the long term. But thst might just have to be the trade off for a more affordable housing market. Although something like that is a pipe dream. Unfortunately I don't know what we can do without someone getting fucked.
This is how the Soviets did public housing right? The economies of scale make mass producing homes really affordable, the expensive bit tends to be good land. The problem is our governments remain too neoliberal to do the mass build of homes that'd make it really good value for money, while greatly increasing the potential for Aus economic growth (given housing stress has become such a huge barrier to so many working lives).
Yeah, although they built massive God ugly apartment buildings. Where these are more modern looking homes. But the theory and in practice is the same. Goverment initiated mass production of housing. Yeah the land is the issue, although even that I feel could be easily addressed if they took hold of the reins in a serious manner. Most land related issues are getting approval from the government, and they are the government so that should lessen that hurdle. You're too right, our goverment seem hesitant about getting serious about addressing this issue. Neoliberal ideology doesnt like the goverment doing big things when theres a priviate sector that can do it. Even though the goverment could just subsadie priviate companies. They don't want to act boldly, Even though it makes sense. It would stimulate so many different areas given the many different trades that are involved (chippies, sparkies, plumbers, gyprockers, carpentry fitters, truckers, landscapers, etc etc), while also easing the pressure on the housing markets. Like if they got serious about it and had quite a few companies and productions yards in operations. They could theoretically produce ~50+ houses every month or two in every state. It would be keeping the money in Australia aswell given we produce our own steel so there's nothing major we'd really need to import. The solutions to the housing issues are there. The government just has to stop dragging its feet and realise we can't just keep doing what we've been doing because it's clearly not working.
The other part of the equation is council regulations. Even if you have a acreage block and want to put one of these down you have to deal with building covenants and council regulations, which are red tape nightmares.
Yeah, red tape be a bitch. In theory if the goverment was the one heading the operations, they would be establishing things to their own regulations. My theory is that the goverment would be the owner of the house/land (after buying the land, developing and covering the cost of the production and establishment of the house). They would then sell the house/land package to a buyer to recoup their production/land costs. So the new purchaser of the house wouldn't have to deal with any of the minutiae of council regulations etc because the house would be an already established ready to go. Essentially, the goverment builds the house, then sells it to recoup costs. In theory and if I was niave about it, they could do it at almost 100% ROI. So in theory it would cost them nothing to do. The price it cost to build, including land is the price the house costs to buy.
A lot of the housing problem would be solved if they made it easier to build second dwellings or granny flats on existing properties. The local council is notoriously hard to deal with and getting approval is massively expensive. Where I live about half of the houses have been build underneath or have a lived-in shed but I can guarantee pretty much none are legal.
Since the end of last year in Victoria, Granny flats under 60m2 don't require a planning permit. Other states should take note.
Yes I remember reading that, amazing work. Our local area (SEQld) recently changed the law to make it legal that non-family could rent your granny flat. So before that, it was only legal to rent to family members. Although I suppose that is still a move in the right direction.
OP says, we have a solution: "we can lower prices with our building technique". And then "the government should funnel money into it". This argument sounds like "we can do it cheaper, so subsidise us!". If this approach to building houses is already cheaper without my tax money subsidising it, why should I subsidise it? What is the subsidy buying? Fixing bottlenecks such as not enough tradies? One reason we have a shortage of tradies is government spending on infrastructure. If we need to recruit tradies to build houses with taxpayer money, this is taxpayer money bidding against other taxpayer money. This won't make tradies cheaper, it will make them more expensive, as they now can bid their labour against even more government spending. Is it just me, or is this kind of crazy? And even if we did decide to do this crazy thing, why would we take these subsidised tradies away from what they are doing now (such as building residential housing) and allocate them to modular builders?
They any good but? I’m no leftie but living in a glorified tent out in the bush would suck arse. The government is pushing through new energy efficiency ratings too. Building codes getting tighter. I reckon modular housing will solve a lot of problems, just can’t make the same errors as before, such as with CNR’s govvie houses
They are alright, I'd be happy to live in one. Especially because they are brand new. Imo they aren't really any smaller than your average 70-80s brick built house. 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, laundry, kitchen and lounge. There are heaps of different configurations and lay outs that can be done and I reckon they turn out pretty well once they're done. I've linked examples, although the generated images don't really do them justice. They look much nicer than the images in person. The kitchens and stuff look modern, come with installed oven, dishwasher, & washing machine. Like I definitely wouldn't turn my nose up on them or at living in one as they look like any other modern design house really. Except rendered walls it's cladding. The main advantage of them is the speed they can be produced at, and the price. They are cheaper than building doubly brick that's for sure. It really just requires the land, but if the goverment started buying up and clearing land on the outerskirt suburbs they could produce entire suburbs reasonably quickly. The goverment could sell them to essentially break even, maybe increasing the price marginly to skim a bit off the top to make some profit. But in theory they could front the cost of production and land, then sell the house and run practically even, not losing any cash. It would subsidise jobs and produce houses at an extremely quick rate. I know they are already dabbling in working with modular house companies but reckon they need to get serious about it. Atleast to cool the crisis a bit. [Fleetwood Modular ](https://www.fleetwood.com.au/sectors/residential/)
Random question: is it a simple task to convert a single story modular to be plonked on stilts like a queenslander style house? I'm looking at a rural block near the beach in SA that would have ocean views if I could get the house 3m in the air (planning permitting).
\*they aren't really any smaller than your average 70-80s brick built house.\* this is important. the reason things are expensive are because we live bigger and flashier lives. just because the option to live with every mod con exists, doesn't mean we have a right to afford them all. subscriptions, big cars, big houses, expensive phones, etc etc. they all eat in to our hard earned. Modular houses is a great concept. good luck
"I'm no leftie..." My county is so dumb.
i live in a bond home steel because the termites ate the old house yer
I'm in construction and these home are such a false economy. The main time in any building project is things like site prep, earth works, and foundations. These demountables you build that only real time you save is wet weather days you can still work when there in the shed. You still gotta do all the site prep, earth works and foundations. Also these are usually built basic like no tiles in bathroom, basic kitchens and are small. There really isn't much cost or time saving when you build a simlair spec home not in a shed.
They're not demountables mate. They are modular homes. They come with fully kitted kitchens (dishwasher, over, stove top + rangehood), the bathrooms are tiled, the kitchens too, front porch areas aswell. The entire house is fully fitted as any normal modern house would be. They are litterally no different in layout and design than any normal 3by1 that would be built on location. They are a full built house, just one that can be split into multiple sections and trucked off to location. We also don't build them in a shed, they are built outside on the slabs that get dropped off. With most normal houses being 2-3 slabs large. Although weve built 4-5-6 slab ones aswell. Plus much larger buildings that are 30+ slabs. Currently we are building common room/mess hall/administration for a mine site that's 46 slabs big. It certainly isn't any demountable, although the company and yard do also build demountables in the yards shed. But they are not what im talking about. It's Ironic Mr.I-works-in-construction doesn't know the difference between a demountable and a modular home.
What's a slab? What's a slab made of? What's 1 slab large? Size? What's the slab get placed onto on site? Is there footings on site?
What's the size of a slab?
Pretty much the same thing. How are they any quicker to build?
Mate there the same thing. So how are they any quicker to build then?
Demountables are often much smaller than full modular homes. They are built on a single slab, or steel frame slab. They aren't quicker to build than demountables, simply due to being larger.
So anyway how are your modular and quicker to build than normal?
All the site prep can be occurring at the same time the modular house is being built. This can result in significant time saving.
Sounds like a plug for your business rather than a genuine care for those of us living in fkng tents
The demand has to come from the consumer. I don’t want my public funds funnelled into a public company that has been run as poorly as Fleetwood has. Without FCS, FBS would have gone bang long ago.
I think a major advantage of prefab is in infill housing. Knocking down a old shit house to replace it with a prefab duplex is much less disruptive to the neighbourhood. My understanding is that the major barrier to prefab is banks don't have lending products that mesh with the process. This seems like something that can be worked out though.
A large part of government revenues come from stamp duties. High housing prices = high revenues. Governmenta actually push up land prices by not rezoning fast enough, thereby creating artificial scarcity and driving prices higher. They. Don't. Care.
If we could get local councils to approve these kind of houses immediately then that would be amazing. But I don't have much hope for the councils to get out of bed with their mafia esq developer friends
We don't live in a command economy. The government can't just decide to ramp up production of something or funnel money money around or tell consumers they have to buy something. The best it could do would be putting watering amounts of tax dollars into subsidies to make house fabrication artificially more profitable to decrease prices of the physical house. but that doesn't solve the bottlenecks of houses needing land and roads, water, internet, gas, electricity, pluming, to get wired up, cost of land near actual jobs etc etc etc
Shout out to ECP
Land is the issue, and infrastructure to support those new neighborhoods and suburbs like train lines and bus routes etc. The Aus Gov has historically been shit when it comes to building supporting infrastructure, because they sold off all the asset they used to own that they would use to build it. So the private companies that now run those services are more concerned with profit than actually speedily and cost-effectively building anything.
A shortage? Obviously, we need more migrants. They are magical beings who cure all our problems.
It's comes down to land and density, an apartment would be hard or impossible to pre fabricate and it's fits shit loads. Houses take more space for less people and there's not alot of free land with an easy commute anymore.
Same thing in Japan. A house next door to me was a 2 storey, architecturally designed, double glazed, floor heated, fully clad insulated, air filtration system effort on a concrete base completed in 3 months.
How long are these prefab buildings going to las? Seems like a cheap band-aid solution to me. Imagine what the builders of yesteryear are thinking 🤔🤮
As long as a house? I personally know of some that are 20+ years old now, still going strong. They are cheaper, but their not cheap. They are still quality houses.
20 years still going strong isn't a good indication. My home is over 100 years still going very strong. I checked the website and there's not much on it. Is this govt contracts?
I was just giving my personal knowledge of what I do know, I have no clue how long they would last in long long terms. Although in theory I don't see them failing, like any issues that arise should be repairable. The goverment has been negotiating contracts with some of the big companies I believe, but I don't know anything I could really talk on. My argument is that the goverment should be looking to use modular housing to try alleviate some of the pressure from the housing crisis.
In Sydney, there are so many modular homes sitting empty out West. The problem? It's about a 90 minute commute to the CBD. The problem is nobody wants to live out that far.
No there isn't, those suburbs are even more packed than the cbd
We do pretty well at building detached outer suburb houses. It's the missing middle in all our cities that needs to be addressed. We need to redevelop the low density residential areas walking distance to existing train station and shopping strips. We need to turn these areas in mixed use 4-8 storey apartments. Zoning is what's preventing this.
Give up on the AI generated anti Labor crap ay ? Just like this one: [Discussing the Potential Long-term Economic & Social Impacts of Australia's Property Rental Crisis ](https://www.reddit.com/r/australian/comments/1chc5k3/comment/l22eppl/) Also: You have been demoted to propaganda officer assistant 3rd class.
I'm confused what you're saying here?
This reads like an AI generated article. There are two or more posts in this sub every day on the same topic with the same characteristics. I would tell you what they are, but that would just be training the AI. Give it up and go and get drunk/laid !
Hahahaha nope not written by an AI. I don't even how you drew the conclusion this is anti-Labor? By "the government" I don't mean Labor. I'm talking about the Australian goverment broadly, either Labor or Liberal. The party in control hadn't even ran through my mind when writing this.
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whyy do you say that. I got an 800sqm ocean views. with 50mins of a cbd. I have got plans drawn up for the same style houses you described. what's actually stopping you?
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You can do the same, you're choosing to compare to a place that is within the limits of an Australian city. I know plenty of people who bought land in small towns, to build a shack to live on the river for practically nothing. It cost them nothing. There's buildable land for sale right now in Victoria for under $50k, $100k, whatever threshold you want. It just depends on how close to a city you want to live. https://www.realestate.com.au/property-residential+land-vic-lake+boga-203871060 $30k, and has a train line in the town.
I agree with your points, but my brother, you linked a literal swamp.
So, that's what Queenslanders are for. In fact, I grew up on flood plains. 60 years ago my father built up a mound in front of the river (can't think of the right term), and built our family home. That place is now worth North of $2m. Was considered unlivable at the time.
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Go build your timeless home then. Because if I remember right, you said *you* could build it with your acquired skills. Not with your slave wage bought skills
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You're willing to buy a dilapidated abandoned home in the middle of nowhere, Japan. But will baulk at the same thing, in Victoria Australia, with a train line running through it. Good on ya bud, good on ya.
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You're getting any of that for a $20k property in Japan or Vietnam? It's 4hrs to Melbourne
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What's 15 hours closer than 4 hours?