Weeoo, weeoo, weeoo.
House prices are clearly the verge of an outright crash if The Pascometer is to be trusted. By my count the contrarian mechanism has produced six straight house price spriuk pieces, each with declining credibility.
Recalling his last effort:
The anti-immigration chorus would prefer to reduce immigration rather than build the infrastructure to realise the nation’s potential. They downplay or ignore the rich rewards of our economy and culture being reinvigorated.
…When there are echoes of the appalling Trump on both sides of our politics, population milestones should be a chance to embrace optimism about this nation, for political leaders to actually show some leadership, to educate and take pride in our story, instead of cringing to court the lowest common denominator, of bowing to the narrow, the ignorant and intolerant.
Which reversed his previous position:
457s are now being processed faster than ever… As the Minister correctly notes, “the increase in the subclass 457 visa grants highlighted the importance of the program in delivering skilled labour to employers across a wide range of professions and industries.”
It also helps reduce inflation by keeping down wages in at least some select industries.
And, with the economy coming off the boil, the matching of 457 visa applicants with areas of particular skills shortages is somewhat less than laser sharp, if only because 47 per cent of those 110, 570 visas were for “secondary grants”, i.e. dependents, who themselves have a very high workforce participation rate in whatever field they fancy…
It’s not so good for workers in the lower half of the pay spectrum who lose bargaining power when positions are filled by 457 visa holders…
Chastened and whirring angrily at being exposed, the mechansim is today fatally attracted to the scene of its own journalistic crime, throwing an even larger demographic cog, this time using output from notorious realty spruiker Peter Wargent:
Amidst the deluge of demographic statistics this week, one particular segment caught the eye of property analyst Pete Wargent: a surge in prime Gen Y FHB candidates.
While the census showed Australia overall is aging, there’s been a noticeable lift in the number of people aged between 25 to 32.
As the accompanying graph shows, there are more than 360,000 in each of those eight year groups, after which numbers fall away to fewer than 311,000 39-year-olds.
That represents a boom in prime would-be or wannabe FHBs. It’s what Wargent calls a demographic tsunami, “a monster surge in housing market demand on its way in due course”.
As luck would have it, the surge is focused on what are already the hottest (worst) markets for FHBs
“Sydney and especially Melbourne have a comparatively high share of their population pyramid sitting squarely in the 25 to 34 age brackets, but in Adelaide and regional South Australia the equivalent share is much lower,” notes Wargent.
And on it goes. Hmm, well, could it be that that lump of marginalised GenY’s is a result of being unable to afford to buy property? They may support rents but, sheesh, with specufestors now running negative carries into property around -3% plus getting smashed on interest-only they had bloody well better.
More importantly, the apparatus is fueled here on what is known around the traps as “selective analysis”. It’s pretty easy to do. Set your lens to find data that only benefit the outcome you want then claim it as fact. For instance, there may well be a group of desperate and angry young Australians for realty parasites to plunder, but there is also a gigantic cohort of Baby Boomers sitting right above them in the demographic pyramid that will need to exit the market for income as they retire. A “demographic vortex” to swallow the supposed tsunami of sorry and economically abused kids. A fair dinkum analysis would take in that and many other factors.
Boing! Another spring flies from this corrupted device.
Weeoo, weeoo, weeoo.
