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Migrants are being accused of driving the property prices up
2010-01-17 23:43:01-05
I hope you’re sitting down to read this, because you’re in for a shocker.
Personally, reading this article in News.com.au I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. If you were ever wondering what drives the property prices up, now you have the answer - it’s the wealthy migrants, from Britain, India and China.
Apparently those “monstrous” migrants, even though their number is in average 500,000 a year (peanuts, compared to the total annual number of property transactions), somehow manage to drive the property-price inflation. You’ve got to be kidding.
How on Earth can they be doing that, you ask? Well, the explanation John Edwards from Residex offers is that they earn above-average salaries, which they spend, buying houses for crazy prices. Yea, that makes a lot of sense.
Let’s see how much sense exactly it makes.
Imagine that you are a newcomer. You have just arrived in a new country that has a more expensive currency than my own, so the money you brought with you shrunk a fair bit. You haven’t had any predecessors here, who left you an inheritance, something to get your foot in the door of the property market - you are making a fresh start. Your salary may be above average, because you are a highly skilled professional - but locals are paid just as much, and the Immigration department makes sure you don’t get better employment terms than any Aussie born person with the same qualifications. You have the whole future of your kids to worry about, you have to pay their school tuition fees and put them through college. Why don’t you just go and buy a house that will cost you 5.5 times your household income, and top it up, throw another 10 grand in, so that nobody beats you on the price.
I rest my case.
If I had to name a suspect, I’d be having hard time to pick just one - but I can promise you, migrants wouldn’t be on that list. How about the taxation incentives that encourage investing in property, how about the banks that allow people to borrow amounts that are 500% of their annual income?
Reading the comments on that article, I could see that some people found this article to be racist to an extent. I, however, think that this article isn’t being fair to Australian-born people; it really presents them in a bad light. It basically says that Aussies are not skilled enough - and therefore not paid enough - to afford a house, if a small proportion of overseas immigration can price them out of the property market. If I was an Aussie by birth, I’d be offended.
I’d really like to get your opinion - what do you think, will property prices stop if no more overseas IT engineers, doctors or accountants will be allowed in Australia?
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