Our residential property market is clearly in crisis, a point on which many Australians now agree. What is less clear is how we fix it.. Solutions will be diverse, but we will only begin to find them when we radically recalibrate our conception of residential property., public discussion, and media coverage have encouraged Australians to view residential property as “an asset class” to build personal and family wealth.
Third, because property is essential and finite, we need to pay attention to its distribution in the population. Some people having property, for example investors, will be at the expense of others, for example first homebuyers. Every time someone buys an investment apartment, someone else does not become a homeowner.
Property rights should not include those that harm others, particularly the great harm of denying them a home. Changes will adversely affect a limited section of the community, but property laws and regulation always change. If they didn’t, we’d still have feudal overlords.