Another aspect of the housing costs (not so much in established places, but definitely in new estates) is the "I WANT IT NOW!" mentality. People wanting houses big enough to hold everything, with a theatre room, rumpus room, and every other type of room you can imagine (full sized snooker table, anyone?)
When I bought, I made a number of choices that limited where I bought:
Easy access to a railway line.
Railway station no further out than zone 2 (no longer an issue, since they're abolishing zone 3 in March ... but in 2004, when I bought, it was a major consideration.)
No more than 30 minutes in to the city on PT during peak hour (which ties in with the zone 2 requirement above.)
Close enough that I could cycle to my then (and still) current job.
I ended up getting a small unit in Mitcham. It cost me $245,000, plus stamp duty and so on. Big enough for me on my own, but not anybody's dream home - it's too small to hold much (I'd be very surprised if it was even ten squares overall). This to me is an advantage; I'm too liable to accumulate cruft if I have space to store it in.
A quarter acre block is not sustainable in the long term; there simply isn't enough land (unless we build our cities in the middle of the desert, with all the problems that entails). There's no question in my mind that our society as a whole needs to re-evaluate the things we consider to be "self evident", and the result of that re-evaluation needs to reflect the need for our society to be sustainable.
I'm actually starting to debate whether I'd be better off renting than owning, but that's a whole other kettle of fish; I'm not about to make that move unless I need to move away from the area I'm currently in, or my finances blow up spectacularly.
(sorry for the double comment; I stuffed the HTML the first time. Gah.)
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Date: 2007-01-08 03:26 am (UTC)When I bought, I made a number of choices that limited where I bought:
I ended up getting a small unit in Mitcham. It cost me $245,000, plus stamp duty and so on. Big enough for me on my own, but not anybody's dream home - it's too small to hold much (I'd be very surprised if it was even ten squares overall). This to me is an advantage; I'm too liable to accumulate cruft if I have space to store it in.
A quarter acre block is not sustainable in the long term; there simply isn't enough land (unless we build our cities in the middle of the desert, with all the problems that entails). There's no question in my mind that our society as a whole needs to re-evaluate the things we consider to be "self evident", and the result of that re-evaluation needs to reflect the need for our society to be sustainable.
I'm actually starting to debate whether I'd be better off renting than owning, but that's a whole other kettle of fish; I'm not about to make that move unless I need to move away from the area I'm currently in, or my finances blow up spectacularly.
(sorry for the double comment; I stuffed the HTML the first time. Gah.)