Fact: Applications for the first home buyers’ grant have fallen dramatically:
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures reportedly show nearly 7,500 buyers a month applied for the First Home Owners Scheme in 2010 compared to 19,000 a month the year before.
Not fact, but reported as fact by lazy ABC:
Rate rises scaring off first homebuyers
…The threat of further interest rate rises is slowing the first homebuyers market.
Clearly, from the drop in applications, first home buyers have given up – and it wouldn’t take a huge leap to conclude that it might have something to do with the ridiculously inflated house prices.
So who says it’s really to do with potential interest rate rises and not the more obvious fact that the market is now almost impossible to enter? Ah, the Real Estate Institute:
The Real Estate Institute of Australia blames the threat of rising interest rates for a fall in the first homebuyers market during 2010…
“But how flat it is, we don’t need any more interest rate rises to really harm the first homebuyers market and the construction industry for new homes any further.”
Yup, it’s the people who profit from the high prices using the national broadcaster to lobby for government to do what it can to keep those prices high. And that’s the only source for the ABC story – the (unnamed) journalist didn’t go and talk to any advocacy groups representing first home buyers (who would presumably have given some quite different answers to the real estate lobby that benefits from prices being so high), or anyone else who might have some concerns about the high prices. Nope, they just report the self-interested claims of one side of the issue as if they’re fact.
This follows a story a few weeks ago (just as lazy as the Fairfax one) where the ABC reported repeated the self-interested claims of BankWest – another company that profits from prices being high – that it was “stamp duty” that was causing first homebuyers “pain”. In that article, the only people quoted were from the bank, the Real Estate Institute of Victoria, and the new Liberal government – all people with an interest in keeping the market inflated for investors.
Seriously, is it impossible for a news organisation to report on the housing issue with some integrity and balance? They’re being shamelessly used as mouthpieces by one side, over and over again.
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No mention either that interest rates are at historic lows, another fact they’d get if they’d bothered to report the story properly with differing viewpoints.
Very lazy.
Well, at least for once they weren’t quoting their old fall-back, the Institute of Public Affairs. We must be thankful for small mercies.
I think tracking the applications over time would probably answer the question as to whether it was interest rates or other causes. Was there a dramatic drop when interest rates started to increase or where they declining in a gradual downhill trend (or a little bit of both).
Beats me why they pay these journalists. Why don’t they just publish the press releases? (oh, that’t right they do).
Good point PB but correlation isn’t causation but yeah, real journalsim wouldn’t kill them.
Speaking of which, isn’t it interesting that most sane people complain about the ABC (and to a lesser extent Fairfax) precisely because they are supposed to do real journalism and we feel especially aggrieved by shameless shilling on their part.
With Murdoch we just expect that type of thing anyway so it is less noteworthy. Is anyone at the ABC listening to our criticism?
And speaking of News Ltd, they’ve now started informing on dissenting citizens as “terrrrsts” for criticising the US govt:
“December 29, 2010 “Indy Star” — FoxNews.com has brought to the attention of authorities an Indianapolis woman accused of making anti-American comments and showing support for alleged terrorist groups.
Emily Norcross, an Indiana Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said Fox forwarded the state agency a video, which the agency forwarded to the Indiana Intelligence Fusion Center.
An article on FoxNews.com says that in the six-minute video, Kathie Smith, 46, and her husband appear alongside photographs of terror attack suspects. Fox has reported that woman called the U.S. a terrorist organization in an e-mail exchange with the news outlet, and that the couple has befriended many Facebook pages that claim to be associated with terrorist groups.”
Have they also been spying on Ozzies for ASIO etc.?
“Fox: We Report You. Decide.”
I think you can give up on ever seeing rational, unbiased reporting on housing prices. The problem is that they’re not just something that people need, they’re also things that people who already have them can make a bunch of money on. And both sides want government policies which benefit them over the other. It’s one of those situations where policy really is a zero-sum game. Increase supply and prices go down – buyers are happy, but owners are unhappy (particularly if they’re recent owners). Decrease supply or artificially stimulate demand and owners are happy because they see their asset increase in price (if not actual value), while potential buyers see themselves as being screwed – particularly if they’re paying taxes to fund those tax breaks that investors use to keep them out of the market.
Meanwhile, I don’t think anyone can honestly say the rental market is easy on those people who’re trying buy.
Here’s the twist, though – and I’ve posted it a few times Over There. Given time, all those warren buffets who think they’re geniuses because their house doubled in price are going to discover that their 2.3 children can’t afford to buy houses … and for reasons I will never understand, that will be a surprise to them. They they’ll start bitching. And oh, how they will bitch, because so many of them are boomers who’ve reaped the rewards of all the previous government programs that made housing affordable … back when that was still fashionable. They won’t want their own house to decrease in price, of course … but they WILL want their own children to have an easier time of finding a place of their own. So what will they focus on? Sales/stamp duties and cash incentives. For their children. Not those other good for nothings with their baby bonuses and plasma screens.
The boom in house prices (if not actual house supply) was very good for howard, because most people benefited. Eventually the scales will tip as more people try to enter the market. Unfortunately, they’ll never make the connection back to where it started.
Not in the ABC, but this article appears in the West Australian using land developers and their peak bodies as sources with no counter opinion given. They even give a plug for one developer’s plans to sell massively over-priced rooms above garages as a solution to the alternative of massively over-priced homes more generally.