Is our 2 party system just a con?

[facthunter]

Private homes are paid for by already taxed Money  and  NOTHING  deductible.  To retrospectively change the rules would not be taxing. it would be Confiscation of an asset  by  deception as a lot of it's  VALUE is because of Inflation, with No deductions for ANYTHING Interest rates, council rates, repairs. insurance along the way. How unfair would that Be? . Over long periods of time the dwelling becomes valueless and only the Land makes it worth anything, Many Houses just get pushed over. An empty lot would be worth More.  It costs Money to demolish and tidy up..  When you rent, you know exactly what it will cost you.  If the neighbours are from Hell you can Just Move without Paying crazy amounts of Money . If you are the kind of Person that Moves a lot, Owning a House is the One thing you Might consider NOT doing. They can tie you down and absorb all your spare  cash..  Most are Now on tiny Blocks where there is Nothing but the House and  car garage. You can't fit between the walls of your Place and next door. Ticky Tacky little boxes all in a row.. How depressing.  Nev

[octave]

3 minutes ago, facthunter said:

Private homes are paid for by already taxed Money  and  NOTHING  deductible. 

 

When I sold my 44-acre property, I had to pay CGT on everything over 5 acres.  I was, however, able to deduct the expenses of owning and maintaining this property.   I am not expressing an opinion for or against CGT on the family home, but I imagine, like my house on more than 5 acres, deductions would be allowed.

[onetrack]

And the ticky-tacky little boxes have come about via property investor greed that has pushed house prices up 700% in 3 decades. That's unsustainable, and is setting the country up for a majpr recession, perhaps even a Depression.

House prices go up 3% annually over the long-term, normally. Only in the last 3 decades has this outlandish property pricing occurred - so we need to look at what has driven that - and it's the taxation system generously favouring property investors. So Labor is now trying to address that major imbalance.

 

[facthunter]

Howard is Pretty Much solely responsible for encouraging Money into houses as the Best Investment. He also sold the People's Bank to the People. "Honest" John Has a Lot to answer for. Nev

[onetrack]

Sorry Nev, your memory is faulty today. It was Paul Keating who sold off the Commonwealth Bank - largely to the other big Australian private banks.

 

QUOTE: The Commonwealth Bank was privatised in stages under the Labor government of Prime Minister Paul Keating.

 

The sell-off process occurred in three tranches:

 

1991: The Keating government floated the initial 30% of the bank's shares to the public.

 

1993: The government sold another tranche, reducing its stake to just over 50%.

 

1996: The remaining government shareholding was fully sold off to investors, completing the privatisation.

[old man emu]

A person I know has a house or two in town that are unoccupied. Why? Because of the costs of repairing the damage that tenants cause. That is probably one of the reasons for the numbers of vacant houses.

[Marty_d]

15 minutes ago, old man emu said:

A person I know has a house or two in town that are unoccupied. Why? Because of the costs of repairing the damage that tenants cause. That is probably one of the reasons for the numbers of vacant houses.

There are many good tenants needing homes. I don't see that as a reason to leave a house unoccupied.

[old man emu]

Like everything these days. Publish a story about a horror renter and it puts the wind up a landlord. Vetting of potential tenants is a pretty terrifying process for a tenant needing a home.

[nomadpete]

Owning a rental house is not the simple business it once was.

 

For instance,

 

There is a whole industry of Real Estate agents managing the rental, taking usually 7% of the rent. They promise to 'protect the value of the property', and protect the interests of the tenant. I have not heard any glowing reports of value for money.

 

There is a notable lack of general care by tenants on the assumption that the landlord is getting rich from the rent, so the wear and rear is worse than that of an owner occupier. Also, many young renters simply have no idea how to look after a property. 

 

Remember, a house is not rentable until it is brought up to a set standard, but the overheads continue to cost the landlord until it is once again rented out. 

 

Nowadays there are extra costs for regular testing of safety switches and fire alarms (every 6 months?).

 

There are no cheap rentals nowadays for the poor. For instance, when I first married, we rented a tumble down house with an outside toilet, with no light. It was rough (non tenantable in modern rules), but we went out and bought paint and spruced it up. Later we moved to better places, but it was common to run a paint roller over the walls to make it look a bit cleaner than it was when we moved in.

Modern tenants wouldn't dream of this.

 

The result is a shortage of cheap rentals. 

 

I had two rentals, one made nil capital gains for seven years, the other made a capital gain. Meanwhile, they just broke even, whilst being a constant pain in the arrs. My experience is that about one tenant in ten was good.

 

Sure, the developers and big players seem to get rich from it, but not the smalltime investors.

 

 

 

[nomadpete]

I welcome the government moving toward controlling the housing investment businesses

[facthunter]

One track It was the HOWARD Gov't the sold off the Last 50% of the CBA. Look it up. Nev

[Siso]

Qantas?

[rgmwa]

We had two rentals. I sold one after five years because we were losing money on it despite it being a nice house with good tenants paying a fair rent, mainly because there was no capital gain over those years. We probably lost $50k overall. I still have the other one, a small A-frame where the increase in block value has been the main driver of capital gain as the house is so small. It has been rented out over the last 20 years to a handful of tenants - all young singles or couples in their early twenties who were great. On the other hand a rental next to my son’s place was utterly trashed by the tenants before the owners managed to get rid of them. Our daughter now rents the A-frame because she like so many others has been priced out of the market and can’t afford to buy. She gets it for what it costs me to keep the property because I don’t want to make money from our kids and hopefully that will help her to save and buy her own place one day. We are very fortunate to have this property now, but I have mixed feelings about properties as investments in general unless you’re pretty hard nosed about pushing rents and cutting costs. 

[willedoo]

26 minutes ago, facthunter said:

One track It was the HOWARD Gov't the sold off the Last 50% of the CBA. Look it up. Nev

Nev can you provide some links that clarify whether Howard took that decision on his own bat or whether it was already locked in by Keating. Reason I ask is that most references I can find say that the sale occurred shortly after Keating's defeat (about 3 months after) when Howard was in office but is attributed to Keating. Labor had planned and set up the sale of the third tranche and it would have sold if Keating had won the 1996 election. Here's a question: was the sale of the third tranche already legislated when Howard took office. It's a bit hard to find accurate information on it.

[facthunter]

Ask the question specifically and you will get the answer I got. I also recall Howard recommending it.. The Last 50% is significant in terms of losing control. It would NOT have been Popular with Laborites. I'm NO admirer of Hawke at all. Nev

[willedoo]

ok, I googled whether the sale of the last 50% was legislated and it was legislated in 1995 under the Commonwealth Bank Sale Act. Short answer, it was already legally locked in before Howard took over in March 1996.. Blaming Howard for it is a bit of a stretch don't you think. If Howard wanted to save it, it would have been near impossible to draft legislation, pass it through parliament and enact it all in twelve short weeks. 

[willedoo]

Government ownership of assets is not the sole love of Laborites. Plenty of conservative voters bemoan the loss of public assets. But I see your point that some Labourites wouldn't be happy with a Labor government selling it.

[onetrack]

Keating spent years talking up the sale of the CBA, it was his baby, all the way.

The champagne glasses are still clinking in the boardrooms of the private banks over their "coup" in getting rid of the CBA - the only bastion still in place to stop private banks from making excessive profits.

I have seen an article about how much this banking greed cost all everyday Australians. 

 

Edited yesterday at 02:52 AM by onetrack

[facthunter]

There was no "OFF Market" trading involved, but I never bought CBA on Principle.  Plenty of others did and did OK. I believed  WE already owned it., Nev

[willedoo]

This might be a bit off topic for this thread but it does involve tiers of government, so I've put it here to save starting a thread for one post. I'm wondering whether the state government has been getting some feedback via their member's electorates regarding recent land valuations and their potential effect on council rates. About a month back I received my new valuation from the state government, an increase of $80,000 above the last valuation. At least it was better than the one before which led to a 30% increase in council rates. Yesterday I received what was titled a 'maintenance valuation' wiith the new valuation taking it back to what it was previously, eg: less the recent $80,000 increase.

 

There was no explanation why they had changed the valuation and in thirty eight years of owning the property, it's the first time I've ever had a valuation decrease. I've also never heard of anyone else in the district ever getting a decrease. My best guess is the state government is very aware of the cost of living stress in the community, and taking into account recent voting intention shifts around the country, they are keen to maintain their vote base and stay in the job.

 

Meanwhile, the local council has had councilors doing community meetings to inform the public that they're broke and have a one billion budget shortfall over ten years and will have to cut spending by 100 million per year for ten years. They're saying the shortfall is caused by the way administrations have handled depreciation over the years. What they are not mentioning is that they've been breaking their necks over the last few years to become another Gold Coast and have been overspending on projects that make the place look flash but have no real practical use.

 

Rate revenue earns them 350 million per year of which 180 million goes to paying council staff. They have 1,800 employees; 800 get their hands dirty, 1,000 sit behind desks. It's likely we'll be getting rate rises so it's possible the state government has looked at the state of council finances and decided to wind back the valuations to avoid a double whammy on ratepayers. I wish the state government's local government department would put the cleaners through the local councils. They've given them too much autonomy in this state over the years and they're out of control. What's happened is that winding back valuations has blown council's excuse for a rate increase. They will have to increase rates considering they're broke, so that's probably the purpose of fessing up to the financial situation at public meetings, as they will have to hit us with a considerable rate increase without a corresponding valuation increase to blame it on as they normally do. The rates are calculated on the property valuation but the council has the discretion to alter the cents in the dollar rate if they choose to.