You are a housing developer with a large plot of land on the fringes of a major city with no planning constraints. How quickly should you sell these lots to supply them to the housing market?
This is the question I answer in a new working paper entitled A Housing…
A puzzle came via twitter following the crazy story about RBA research claiming that if you remove planning controls, apartment prices will fall 42%.
I argued that it would be weird for property developers to lobby for policies that eroded the value of their products and send their housing projects…
Housing supply is one of the most misunderstood processes in economics. The reason for this is that the core standard theory of economics is a static one-period model of production with a fixed capital endowment. …
A common objective of town planning schemes is the densification of existing suburbs to create “missing middle” density. This is usually enacted by allowing areas previously developed for detached housing to be redeveloped into incrementally more dense uses, such as townhouses and walk-up apartments.
But economic constraints, not planning constraints…
Cameron Murray
Henry Halloran Trust, The University of Sydney
20 March 2020
- We propose that State governments (or Federal) create a “Central Housing Bank” (CHB) that stabilises the housing construction sector by swapping assets, in this case, cash, for new dwellings. …
This is an expanded version of an article first published at The Conversation.
Most think-tanks and policy groups in Australia think that a policy to swap ‘stamp duties for land value taxes’, or what I will call SD4LVT, is going to provide some impressive economic and housing benefits.
But layers…
People are often confused about retirement income systems. Understandably so. Most economists, and organisations such as the IMF, OECD, national treasuries, and think-tanks, have promoted a view that countries that rely more heavily on taxation and transfers to facilitate retirement incomes (pay-as-you-go systems) are at an economic disadvantage compared to…
Bernie Sanders has smashed the Overton window. Rent control is going global.
Unfortunately, this means that the economics 101 brigade has come out in force to smugly Vox-splain their incorrect model of rent control and housing market dynamics.
Regulating housing rents makes economic sense because homes are attached to…
When the Australia government introduced a cash grant for first home buyers, the aggregate effect was to increase home prices by roughly the amount of the grant, quickly negating its effect on affordability.
This observation has led many people to mistakenly believe that giving cash grants in any form will…
Many people hold the view that rezoning land to allow higher density residential uses on each plot will accelerate the rate of city housing development.
I think this is wrong.
The main reason I think this is because there are a finite number of new buyers per period, and residential…
Cameron Murray
Economist. Corruption, environment, property market specialist. Blogger. Thinks economics could be better than it is. http://fresheconomicthinking.com
