I read about encouraging Finns to have investment properties to rent to foreigners and was like ahh that's like here, but not really as apparently a "lot" (I don't know how much, it might not actually be "a lot" percentage wise but 1% feels like "a lot" when the amount is more than one is used to dealing with) of Australian property (including farms) is sold to foreign investors, and seems that the "locals" over here will cry about that in one breath but then hold out for that sweet foreign investment dollar in the next because they "can get more money so it just makes sense" (as per usual this only applies when they personally will gain but nobody else should because it's wrong and bad for the country or something).
J and I are currently loathing potentially becoming part of a problem we want nothing to do with as with the way the local (and perhaps further) economy is geared, it seems our only viable option to actually have the resources for retirement is investment properties (the person we were talking to was basically explaining how we chain it to buy more which is what clients usually do, we turned out to be a tiny subset of exceedingly difficult clients who really, really, really don't want to do this and are deeply resentful of feeling forced into it, not blaming the people helping us navigate/investigate this disgusting system obviously), but at least heading that route opens up some other options that we didn't have access to previously.
I hate it.
One good outcome of that investigation though is that they were able to help us refinance our current mortgage to a bank with a much lower interest rate.
Is it a similar kind of situation there?
When we were looking to buy an REA was anxiously trying to tell us that 400sqm was a "big family-sized" block these days because that's just how it was (we just kept looking at them like it doesn't matter how loudly you scream it at people to try to make it true, you're objectively wrong and will always be objectively wrong and it will never be true, apparently now they're trying to say 200sqm is big).
And now two kids is a "large" family apparently O_O it was four when we started and may have come down to three as I seem to recall (perhaps inaccurately) getting a "large family supplement" for a while when I was getting Centrelink.
No one blames the sellers, do they? Blame the foreign investors looking for an ROI, but the sellers are looking for an ROI too. Governments, companies and private people alike.
I understand this well. The problem is in the economy and society we have built, is that it is either join them, or suffer greatly, and have your kids and their kids suffer also. It is pretty terrible. :/
Insane, isn't it?
For reference, we have a relatively standard sized block for a house, maybe a little bigger - and it is almost 1200sqm.
So even if every woman had a "large" family, it isn't enough to replace the population - without immigration. Falling populations might be a great thing - but not for the economy as it stands, or anyone invested in it.
Absolutely. I know that's what J was thinking when we bought our current place (his family are a LOT more concerned about money in property than mine, I just want to make a nice home and my parents are like yep get that and him and his parents are screaming about not "overcapitalising" and unable to cope with the fact that I literally don't care even though I probably "should" but that's the story of my existence), it was in an area planned for rezoning which kicked in a fair few years after we bought it. Was supposed to help us sell easier, did not.
Might help the kids or any grandkids once we're dead and gone I guess as I don't think we're going to try again in the foreseeable future.
Your block is a nice size :D Ours is 900sqm, could have got bigger further out but we didn't want to go too much further out (previously it was J's work that was the problem but now it's mine as he works from home and just goes to the office on days where they have particularly long meetings) and the rest of this location is pretty nice (most of the time).
Well it can adapt or die. We'll just adapt like we're doing and keep encouraging others to do likewise. My daughter's boyfriend trades crypto (including paying for stuff, there was one time where his dad was having trouble with the bank and asked him to please pay someone they knew in crypto as apparently they both do crypto and he would pay him back when the bank stopped being annoying, and I jokingly told my daughter she could definitely keep this one XD) and a lot of the young adults at work and the young adults we've been dealing with in our recent financial planning forays give even curmudgeonly old J hope, they're not as dumb as the average likes to pretend.