CMTHE scarcity of residential land that has been blamed for forcing up home prices in southeast Queensland is just a myth, according to a new report.
The report reveals there is plenty of land available to meet housing demand for the next 19 years – but most of it is in the hands of major developers.
And much of the available land is in areas less desired by homebuilders, who mainly want to live near the coast, according to the report by the Local Government Association of Queensland.
Premier Anna Bligh earlier this year called on council to fast-track new developments to improve housing affordability.
I'm sure that'll fix things. Give more land, more quickly to the people hoarding it as an investment. I bet she still can't figure out why she's toast.
2 comments:
Um, I don't Blight is talking about releasing new land, just speeding up the development of land which has already been purchased. This policy is not meant to have any effect on deliberate hording. In any case paragraph five of the article notes that the LGAQ didn't find much evidence of hording - hence it isn't just the cut and dry 'blame the big developers who are deliberately screwing us out of homes' template story that today tonight would have you believe.
BTW Didn't you raise this issue already back in July? My feeling then and now is that this policy won't help much and is more an exercise in blame passing (to excuse and pre-empt greater control over certain aspects of local government decision making).
"In any case paragraph five of the article notes that the LGAQ didn't find much evidence of hording - hence it isn't just the cut and dry 'blame the big developers who are deliberately screwing us out of homes' template story"
developers buy land speculatively and hold on to it till they can achieve maximal profit from it. it has nothing to do with hoarding. that's like saying there is no evidence people who buy shares hoard them. they don't, they buy low and sell high. the problem is that large, well capitalised land buyers have interests diametrically opposed to small private buyers. i thought that would be obvious.
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