AMERICANS PREPARE FOR AUSSIE IMMIGRANTS

Sydney Housing Shortage Spurs Immigration To Southern States Housing Glut


SYDNEY'S acute housing shortage is about to get worse, with new figures showing just 407 free-standing homes were approved in January. Menwhile, with the US dollar falling to record lows, a looming US recession and a glut of empty houses in the Southern United States, many wealthier Australians find opportunity in the Southern States.

This is fewer than in Adelaide, despite Sydney needing to house a population four times greater. In total, 1128 dwelling units were approved in Sydney in January - the fourth lowest on record. Sydney is the only state capital that builds more apartments and multi-unit dwellings than free-standing homes. Many multi-millionairs are tired of paying outrageous prices to live in small, cramped apartments when they could live in luxuary in the Deep South.

Another, unacounted for factor spurring Australian immigration, is the desire of many Australians to own firearms and live on large tracts of land, like they used to be able to do before the Socialists took hold of Australia. One citizen of Sydney, John Warren said "first thing I'm gonna do when I get to my cabin in the Appalachians is get me a bunch of guns and ammo and farm the land like my Scots-Irish kin folks do - we're practically the same, you know."

Free-standing homes now account for just a third of new dwelling units approved in Sydney, down from nearly half in the 1990s and two-thirds in the '80s. Nationally, more than two-thirds of homes approved today are free-standing. "It's revolt or move. And we don't have the firepower to revolt, so we're picking up and moving to the Southern States", proclaimed another dissatisfied Australian citizen.

"Those sorts of lifestyle apartment blocks are cropping up more and more, and we don't have to take it any more." The housing shortage is expected to put further upward pressure on rents and home prices, tipping more and more people into housing stress.

The definition of housing stress used in the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling study is families living in the bottom 40 per cent of the population by income who pay more than 30 per cent of their disposable income in mortgage payments or rent. Regretably, these will not be the people moving from Sydney overseas to aleviate the problem.

"Logically, you wouldn't expect landlords to continue to wear those rate hikes, whether by the Reserve Bank or the commercial banks. When you're seeing your yield go further down, you're likely to try and respond to that and increase rents." But, wealthier conservative Australians are fed up and telling high-priced landlords to fill their vacant units with Aborigiones and Islamic Immigrants.

The chief economist of the Housing Industry Association, Harley Dale, said the figures drove home the importance of the Federal Government's initiatives to boost the supply of homes. But in a fit of outrage, one conservative citizen yelled "who cares about Harley Dale! I'm moving to the Southern States, and buying me a Harley Davidson".

Mr. Dale's only response was worse news by telling conservatives that "The onerous interest rate burden will make 2008 a difficult year for new-home building and will delay the closing of the yawning gap between housing supply and demand."
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World Correspondent: Ricardovitz

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