Housing and why it sucks
Housing affordability has become a bit of an issue around here of late. Both sides of politics are talking about it quite a bit, as are commentators of all stripes.
The proposals so far have not been particularly relevant to us as we’re in an “interesting” position. Specifically, neither of us can drive so we absolutely must be near good public transport, and our income is such that we don’t qualify as “low income”. Most proposals are either geared toward making rentals less expensive for low-income earners or for those buying newly-constructed houses, and the latter are almost entirely on the very fringes of our cities where public transport barely exists.
What would make us happy? Well, the ideal would be for the housing market to calm down and prices to drop so we could reasonably afford to buy a two or three bedroom house with a yard within a 45 minute commute by train to the CBD. And when I write “afford” I don’t mean “will a bank lend us an insane amount of money that’ll cripple us?”, I mean “for an amount of money we can repay over 25 years without having to eat cardboard”.
But leaving aside that fantasy-land, what’d be nice would be to make renting less horrible. Leases of five years or more, the right to make cosmetic changes to the place, a cap on just how much rent can be increased each year (indexed, perhaps?), and lease terms that allow pets. If an entire generation is to be locked out of the property market then we ought to at least be able to settle down in a rented house, make it our home, and have some moderate level of security.
Popularity: 41% [?]
It’s always baffling to me just how different things are done outside (central) Europe.
Hereabouts the majority of people live in apartments, which are rented well above 90 % of the time, with the lease time usually being indefinite (of course the landlords constantly try for everything being short-term, but in general polit-icks manages to thwart that). Rents are index-bound, with not many ways around for the bloodsucking owners. Oh, and you always have the right to make improvements to rented property.
The downside of course is that for most people, even quite-well-earning as myself, a house just ain’t affordable, at least not in areas within sensible reach (by PT or car) of actual workplaces (read: the cities), but that’s also an effect of the sheer population density.
(In the major cities apartment rents also tend to go up more than inflation, f’rex in Vienna we’re well above EUR 10/m²/month now - which sure makes life interesting for the average bloke with a EUR 1.200/month income.)
In much of Australia we’re rapidly heading toward a similar situation with respect to home ownership but with few protections for tenants. While we don’t quite have the population density of much of Europe, we apparently have the second most-concentrated population distribution in the developed world. And it’s only going to get worse.
Hear, hear!
Who has the most concentrated population distribution? Is it Japan?
I’m not sure and a little time with Google doesn’t help. It’d be nice to see some citations for the claims circulating in the media.
My guess would be Japan, Hong Kong, or maybe Singapore. It probably depends how “developed” is defined.
For any non-Australians who wander by, yes, we have a really big continent, but most of it isn’t suitable for much of anything so the vast majority of us live in a few cities on the edge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selected_cities_by_population_density
City of Melbourne (part of Melbourne metro area), Australia 1,791/km² (4,639/sq mi)
Vienna, Austria 3,992/km² (10,339/sq mi)
City of Sydney (part of Sydney metro area), Australia 5,736/km² (14,856/sq mi)
Singapore 6,411/km² (16,604/sq mi)
City of Paris (part of Paris metro area), France 24,775/km² (64,167/sq mi)
And if you’re curious, look at South Asia in that list. Wow!
Population density is not the same thing as population distribution. The idea is that we have lots and lots of space but we’re almost all in a few places with the rest empty.
By the way, most people in Melbourne don’t live in the City of Melbourne, they live in one of the other council areas. Which are very large and spread out with absolutely huge gaps in the public transport network.
[...] writes here about his discontent with regard to Melbourne’s real estate market, both for buyers and [...]