Melbourne apartment developer and AFR rich lister, Tim Gurner, has attacked the federal government for turning away international students and temporary migrants, claiming the slump in immigration is destroying the property market:
“I am definitely not very optimistic at the moment, the economic shock is coming. It won’t bypass us,” Mr Gurner said as part of a property webinar…
“We didn’t support them [temporary migrants]. We told them to go home. It’s just the most insane thing I’ve ever seen in my career without a doubt”…
“We have treated immigrants [which drive the residential market] like the second cousin, when they have built our economy and built our cities for the last five to 10, even 20 years”…
An exodus of students drove a tripling of residential vacancy rates in the inner city of Melbourne in April, according to new figures published by the Melbourne City Council…
“The rental market had taken a massive hit. It’s my biggest concern,” Mr Gurner said. He said rents had fallen between 10 and 30 per cent, which if sustained would impact residential values.
“We’ve just completed 140 apartments with 100 of them in the letting pool.
“We’d normally lease them all in two hours with one inspection. We’ve leased half of them in six weeks”.
Suck it up Tim. You’ve made out like a bandit as Melbourne’s population exploded by more than 1.4 million people (40%) over the past 15 years on the back of mass immigration:
This extreme growth has been an unmitigated disaster for incumbent residents who have been shoe horned into smaller and more expensive housing, been forced to endure longer commutes on over-crowded roads and sardine-packed trains, and have been required to fund the expensive infrastructure required to accommodate the bigger population.
Of course, developer parasites like Tim Gurner support perpetual population growth because it is in their own self interest to do so. They get to privatise the gains while socialising the costs on the broader public.
A Ponzi scheme is no way to apply government policy for the good of the people.
Developers like Gurner should meet the needs of Australians. Not the other way around.
