Are Governments Really Interested in Fixing the Housing Problem? Policy Capture and Busy Work in Australia

Gurran, Nicole; Phibbs, Peter

doi:10.1080/02673037.2015.1044948

Cited by 86 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Business leaders are seen as likely to ‘retreat into a mind‐set culture of short‐termism and almost obsessional focus on micro detail and reactive risk management’, attributes that are inconsistent with a ‘“big picture”, proactive, long‐term focus required for effective public policy‐making’. Gurran and Phibbs () provide insights into the ways in which powerful interest groups can capture housing policy.…”

Section: Fixing Australia's Underlying Housing Affordability Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Does Australia Have an Affordable Housing Problem and What Can Be Done About It?

Yates¹

2016

Australian Economic Review

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As a result of economic trends in Australia over the past 25 years, a growing proportion of households have faced high housing costs in relation to their income because of a shortage of affordable housing, particularly in areas where there is ready access to well-paid employment. Problems have been particularly severe for lower income renters. This article provides a proposal to address this shortage, based on encouraging institutional financing of affordable rental housing, suggests more controversial policies that might be needed to address underlying causes and identifies a number of reasons why so little progress has been made.

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Section: Fixing Australia's Underlying Housing Affordability Problemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Does Australia Have an Affordable Housing Problem and What Can Be Done About It?

Yates¹

2016

Australian Economic Review

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“…The regulation-focussed literature is notable for its lack of attention to either its theoretical consistency or its focus on the design and implementation of regulations themselves (Gurran & Phibbs, 2015;Murray, 2019). But the most glaring challenge to the static models of the regulation-focussed view is the existence of landbanking, where housing developers "deliberately distort the market by limiting supply" (COAG, 2012, p.25).…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Time is money: How landbanking constrains housing supply

Murray

2020

Journal of Housing Economics

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Many housing policies aim to increase supply and reduce prices through rezoning, relying on the assumption that increasing allowable densities automatically accelerates the rate of housing supply. However, the existence of landbanking (land hoarding), where land able to be profitably developed for housing is withheld from the market in anticipation of future gains, undermines the logic of such policy changes. We expose major limits of the static housing supply model behind these policies by looking at the degree to which landbanking behaviour is consistent with model predictions. To do this, we assemble a new dataset of home sales and landbanks from the annual reports of Australia's top eight publicly-listed residential developers from 2001 to 2018 and use complete state-level planning approvals and lot production data in Queensland, Australia. In contrast to the static model prediction that landbanks serve the function of inventories, and are hence minimised, we find that (1) over 200,000 housing lots, or 13 years of new supply, are held by the eight largest housing development companies, and eight years of these landbanks are held in housing subdivisions that are approved and already for sale, that (2) the amount of zoned supply in a region is unrelated to the rate of new housing supply, and that (3) housing developers routinely delay housing production to capitalise on market cycles. Dynamic incentives to maximise total returns, including capital gains in the option value of undeveloped land, could be related to observed behaviour.

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“…Meanwhile, governments become drawn into the rentierization process once home ownership becomes established as the most desirable form of tenure and a vote winner. An alignment of political interests with the financial interests of rentiers also creates avenues for regulatory and policy capture via revolving doors between government, developers and the banking system (Gurran and Phibbs, 2015;Jacobs, 2015;Murray and Frijters, 2017).…”

Section: Key Dynamics Of Housing-market Rentierizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

When homes earn more than jobs: the rentierization of the Australian housing market

Murray¹,

Ryan-Collins²

2020

Preprint

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This article develops the concept of housing market ‘rentierization’ to describe the shift in the treatment of housing away from its use as a consumption good to an asset from which economic rent can be extracted, with Australia as a canonical example. Rentierization encompasses, but goes beyond, the financialisation of housing that has been the focus of attention in recent political economy literature as it involves policy changes and coordination across the land and housing market, fiscal-policy as well as financial policy spheres. In addition, we argue, rentierization offers a better explanation of rising house prices than the decline in real interest rates which has come to the fore in the recent economics literature. Our study of Australia examines the returns to land and housing over time and traces the roots of rentierization to developments that preceded the financial liberalisation of the 1980s, including the privatisation of public housing in the 1960s and 70s. We consider some of the reasons for the resilience of Australia’s rentier-oriented housing model, and policy alternatives which might help reduce the logic of rentierization and, in doing so, reduce housing-related inequalities.

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Are Governments Really Interested in Fixing the Housing Problem? Policy Capture and Busy Work in Australia

Cited by 86 publications

References 30 publications

Why Does Australia Have an Affordable Housing Problem and What Can Be Done About It?

Why Does Australia Have an Affordable Housing Problem and What Can Be Done About It?

Time is money: How landbanking constrains housing supply

When homes earn more than jobs: the rentierization of the Australian housing market

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