I want to let you know it's becoming very clear now. The federal election the next one that's going to be held, the battleground is going to be housing. There's no question about it. You can see it's ramping up. Dutton's response to the budget from two weeks ago running commentary continue going is that they are going to try and win the election on the biggest issue that affects Australians right now and that is the price of a house.
Speaker 1:
If you're buying it, if you own it at the moment, how are you coping with the 13 rate rises? How are you coping with the 13 rate rises where, for most people, it's close to paying double interest rates or, sorry, double their repayment, and then, of course, rents, which are absolutely soaring. And all I'm going to say to you watching here right now is look, how do I explain this is look, how do I explain this? I'm going to the Gold Coast now. I'm staying at a hotel tonight. I'm staying at the Star Hotel, okay, on the Gold Coast, which is right opposite the Exhibition Centre, where the conference is, and I've got to say to you there's X amount of rooms there. Now just imagine if the Star turned around and said don't worry, just take them in, let them in. Let them in, who cares? If we don't have enough rooms, we'll put them in. They can sort of lie down at the reception in the emergency stairs that you go down. We'll throw them in the laundries. They can sit in the corridors, right. And that is pretty much what the Australian government has done in housing.
Speaker 1:
And it's a difficult subject to talk about, because when you start touching the subject on migration, the minute you start actually saying, hey, maybe we need slow migration, in come the people that turn around and say, oh, that's racist, that's racist or along those lines. Well, listen, my parents migrated to Australia from Greece, like many people did from Europe in the 60s, some in the 50s years. It has not been Europeans as much. It's been Chinese, taiwanese, indians, nepalese, bangladeshis, the list goes on and it's a wonderful opportunity for these people to build incredible lives and build a future for their children, very similar to what the Greeks, the Italians, the Lebanese, so on. I'm not going to name every country, but you need to understand that even the Labor government now even the Labor government is actually saying, yeah, we're going to tame down migration, because that is one of the major contributors to the housing issue. Right, but it's not the only one.
Speaker 1:
One that hasn't been talked about much is the fact that after COVID and the data is very clear after COVID the amount of people living per house actually went lower. That is right. Household actually have lower numbers of people than prior to COVID. And the reason why is COVID gave people the need to have space. Covid gave people the need to have Zoom rooms. Actually, zoom is probably part of the reason why we have a housing issue now because people needed to have more space. So what they did is created offices out of kitchens where they'd set up their laptop and be doing their Zoom work one, two, three, four, some people five days a week. And people needed more space. So essentially, what happened is the amount of people had to spread out to the available properties, and that has been one of the big changes in the way people live in real estate post COVID. So that hasn't helped.
Speaker 1:
And of course, we also know that building came to an absolute halt. Developers said I'm not prepared to actually buy land, build with the risk of materials skyrocketing, with the risk of not actually finding tradespeople and then having to pay high holding costs because of borrowing costs going up, which is interest rates. And then, in addition to that, in various parts of Australia they've made it very difficult to actually get approvals through, or if it's not approvals, they're approved. But variation, small changes, right. So what happened is the developer said we're going to sit on the sidelines and watch till there's a realignment in values, where realignment means that they're either going to sell for more end product or you're going to buy the land at a lower price. So these are the issues that don't seem that they're going to go away anytime soon. However, I will say there is a little bit of hope, I think, for buyers out there Because, apart from Perth, stock levels across Australia are higher than they've been for their five-year average and in fact we're seeing winters are normally periods where volume goes down.
Speaker 1:
That is not the case at the moment. I have to tell you that I'm taking leave from the 22nd of June to the 22nd of July to go overseas, and that is normally a time when there is reduced volume, school holidays and the colder weather. But I can tell you, if I stayed here, I would have 20 auctions a weekend. The amount of auctions that are being booked is quite extraordinary. So most important thing is that I think now you've got both the Liberal Government and the Labor Government are beginning to realise, hey, what are the people whinging about in this country? And they're not whinging about the small deflective issues that you read about, about Albo and Co talking about. And now all of a sudden they realise, hey, our people are in pain, they're not falling for this.
Speaker 1:
And I've got to tell you there's a level of distrust out there, and the distrust happened because they'd been deceived about interest rates. They were told many years ago rates wouldn't be going up, yet they went up 13 times. They were told various things about COVID, the vaccines and I'm not going to dwell on that because I do understand that COVID was real, but some of the information related to it that was actually communicated to people appears now to be inaccurate. And what actually happens is when people are lied to, they stop believing. And, quite frankly, I wouldn't believe anything either, not because people are liars, I just think that, deep down, nobody bloody knows.
