I was looking at the CPI numbers
As far as I can tell Transport(fuel and vehicle costs) and furniture (China and covid?) were the two biggest contributors to inflation here outside housing - new build/construction costs?
Couldn’t the state governments release a ■■■■ load more land for development to put downward pressure on land as a component of housing?
Not much we can really do about Chinese supply and transport costs?
Food is the other contributor to inflation and that isn’t going anywhere.
The head works required for land tax 6+ months, and that is if the zoning is sorted, so it just isn’t a viable option.
Also, if it were actually possible to do, it would be an absolute disaster to just release a glut of land into the marketplace. It would be fifty times worse than the home builder stimulus (and then the extension) that has cause the housing price spike. The home builder stimulus meant the industry is (was in most states now) trying to build 24 months of activity in 12 months in a COVID lockdown world. Releasing a glut of land would seriously impact existing housing stock prices / impact lvrs etc without actually allowing and more housing to be built.
The housing sector, like so many industries, desperately needs government to get out of the way and let it build houses.
As an aussie I find this so bonkers. A good mate of mine in the UK has a (i believe) 30 year fixed mortgage on his property purchased in 2020. Something like just over 2%. So just by being lucky that he was in the market at this very point in time, he’ll be paying 2% for the entire mortgage (if he stays put), whereas someone buying a house in 2023-24 is probably paying many multiples of that…
I’ve missed the point on how more land for sale makes it harder to build more houses?
Yeah but you wouldn’t finance your purchase at 30 years fixed right now would you? So if housing prices have taken a bit of a dive you buy with it financed variably and then refinance when rates are better.
The shortage of building materials and their rapid increase in price means that it will cost about 25% more to build a house, that’s if you can get anybody to build it.
The real estate market is in a weird place where sale prices are going down due to interest rate and inflationary pressues but the cost of building is going up. Sooner or later the market will realise that it’s so expensive to build you would be better off buying something that has already been built. Then voila, prices of existing available property go up.
The mob I’m working for is just about to complete a billion dollar housing project which looked like going pear shaped due to financial problems in the industry. Fortunately it’s gonna turn out alright and investors, buyers and renters (including rent to buy customers) are happy with the result.
It doesn’t deliver more houses. The trade base is the trade base and it delivers a fix number of houses a year. Land is not currently part of the critical path to deliver affordable housing.
Land has been in under supply in past, and probably will become so again in the future, but the biggest issue for housing, by far, is the tax and regulations imposed on housing. For instance, housing is now transitioning to 7 star energy efficiency without any requirement on the existing housing stock. This is a six figure issue for all new homes!
Hang on, isn’t the underlying land value the largest component in the price of a house?
I get what you’re saying re: regulations to raise a minimum quality on the build adding costs, but even then it’s still not hugely significant in most locations is it on the overall price?
I’d say the other issue is how housing is financed and tax regulation which encourages both borrowing significantly too much money and providing incentive to do so via tax breaks.
AFAIK making housing more affordable is a long painful process.
Many current homeowners won’t see much love from their investment if the price of an essential roof over one’s head is made more affordable.
The biggest problem with opening up masses of land is the infrastructure connections often aren’t covered. You end up with a false economy of a short term sugar hit with housing, followed by a collapse of road and rail transport that gets overwhelmed. Massive infrastructure investment then needs to catch up, at other people’s expense.
I’ve lived at the edge of the SE suburbs for 20 years. Have seen the impacts of rolling out a growth corridor with no thought to infrastructure. Feeder roads to the freeway that once took 5 min to drive down can take up to an hour before you reach the freeway on ramp.
We are bad at this. My personal preference is to minimise the growth of sprawl and instead support higher density redevelopment.
US restricts sales of chips to China
China restricts sales of rare earths to the US?
Who wins here…maybe Australia?
Australian firm Lynas Rare Earths has been contracted by the United States Department of Defense to build a multimillion-dollar processing facility in the US in a bid to reduce its reliance on China for strategic minerals.
Lynas is the world’s only significant rare earths producer outside China and runs the Mount Weld mine in Western Australia.
Do your own research.
A bit of a cross-over from the Russia invades Ukraine thread - just wondering what options there are on the ASX that are of the Drone / drone defence theme?
Even more broadly, which military options do we have available to invest in through the ASX?
Worryingly, it seems to be a growth area…
All suggestions appreciated 
Dedendtex are Dandenong based and sent drones to Ukraine. Don’t think they are asx listed.
Droneshield are NSW based on the asx, but I haven’t seen them before. Don’t know what their tech is like, what contracts they may have.
There’s not much on the asx. Ventia is the largest, but they are just an amorphous blog of a facility maintenance company. Most other big players are local branches of multinationals.
Thanks very much.
Thanks also for all the effort you put in feeding the war thread, I am amazed at how much info you are able to gather and share, along with many other posters
Cheers, can see the share price has rallied.
The CEO/MD she has been bailing out of the company big time? Converting options and selling on market.
ELS.ASX
Drone company, focus on utility to deliver i.e. pitching for walmart business. They also have a utility to provide medical supplies via drone.
Not sure they will pivot to the military utility, but they are in the drone space.
Iron ore price dropped a bit recently
CBA think the iron prices will keep dropping in the short term and then rise in around March 23. They are linking this to the Chinese moving away from the zero covid policy which they believe will kick start the Chinese economy.
Uh oh, crypto contagion.
“More crypto exchanges will fail,” said the cryptocurrency worlds biggest personalities, Sam Bankman-Fried in one interview adding that some firms are “secretly insolvent”.
Now it seems his company joins the growing list of cryptocurrency businesses that have failed thanks to a recurring problem - a lack of cash reserves.
Binance pulled out.