The hypocrisy of Australia’s property lobby is on display yet again.
After spending years claiming that mass immigration was not driving up Australian home values or rents, these same people are now claiming that the sharp reduction in immigration following COVID-19 travel bans is decimating the property market:
Sydney’s investment apartment market is particularly vulnerable to closed borders, the property economist Dr Andrew Wilson has noted after the Prime Minister confirmed the pending big drop in immigration…
[Wilson] said he’s most concerned about any reduced demand from students… He said these two factors had contributed to the current spike in rental vacancies for landlords in Sydney…
“The government has a clear responsibility to do all that it can to encourage migration which always remains a positive for the Sydney housing market and broader economy,” he said.
But he acknowledged that high levels of immigration would “be a really tricky proposition to sell with 10 per cent plus unemployment”…
Now was not the time to be “rethinking immigration”, Tom Forrest, the boss of the property development group, Urban Taskforce said. “Immigration is critical to maintaining economic growth and pulling our country out of recession…
The AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver said the drop in immigration will cut underlying demand for housing by about 80,000 dwellings per annum nationally from a norm of about 200,000 dwellings in recent years…
“As a result it will, along with high underlying unemployment levels, put downwards pressure on property prices”…
Mass immigration is the ultimate Ponzi scheme, with the property industry privatising the gains while the costs are socialised on the existing population via funding the increasing infrastructure needs (water, power, transport, recreation facilities etc), as well as suffering the downsides via increasing congestion, being crammed into defective high-rise apartments, and lower wages.
Exorbitant property prices in Sydney and Melbourne have prevented nearly an entire generation from owning a home, while consigning the rest to a lifetime of mortgage servitude and shoe-box living.
Therefore, removing mass immigration – a key demand driver – would significantly improve housing affordability, in addition to consigning fewer people to living in tiny apartments.
Sadly, our political leaders don’t care about these truths. After stimulating the construction of thousands of extra homes, the federal government will inevitably return to importing hundreds of thousands of migrants to fill them. This is how Australia’s Ponzi economy works.
Indeed, it appears a plan is already being hatched to do so:
The federal government will consider advice for so-called “quarantine bridges”, a plan being designed to allow skilled migrants to fly despite international travel movements being expected to remain locked down until at least next year…
Skilled workers, wealthy individuals and international students could be allowed to travel sooner than broader tourism restarts, but only through private and charter services and if travellers agree to undergo mandatory hotel quarantine.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
