'I don't understand' - baffled homeowners face tax hikes, demonisation and loss of amenity as developers push people into units smaller than a garage
You will "own nothing and be happy" as corporates force you out
The lobby that pushed the Federal Government to create a housing shortage with excess migration is now punishing homeowners, “encouraging” people off their land so developers can take it for unit blocks.
The first victims of the New South Wales Government’s plan to sideline councils and let developers run rampant spoke at a housing forum in Sydney’s East on June 11.
Residents revealed how rising taxes were forcing them out, while others have discovered unit blocks planned right on their boundary, blocking all their light.
Instead of fighting it hard like a true opposition, the NSW Liberals said they want tax incentives to “free up supply”. That means “helping” home-owners out in favour of unit blocks.
The NSW Government passed a radical new planning policy in February to allow developers to build six-storey and eight-storey flats within 800m of designated “town centres”, effectively re-zoning hundreds of thousands of homes overnight.
These “town centres” are basically any place with a supermarket or a public transport hub across Greater Sydney, the Central Coast, Newcastle and the Lower Hunter, and the Illawarra-Shoalhaven districts.
Homeowners can wake up to huge development next-door, with traffic problems, their sunlight blocked and no way to object. The development consent authority cannot refuse a developer’s plan as long as their unit block stays inside the new non-discretionary standards.
You can look up the list of “town centres” here to see if you are affected.
The policy is part of the NSW Government’s plan to build 112,000 homes over the next five years in response to the National Housing Accord.
It’s touted as a “solution” to the housing crisis that the Federal Government deliberately created with excess migration after lobbying from the Business Council of Australia, the Property Council of Australia, developers including Mereton, Lendlease and Mirvac, and universities dependent on foreign student fees, among others.
Ordinary people are not “efficient” - especially empty nesters, as the Property Council of Australia says. So they must be “encouraged” out of their homes with punitive taxes and loss of amenity so developers can take their land and put up efficient units.
They claim that increasing supply will ease rents and prices but the reality is that the Federal Government has already projected it will be importing 337,500 people per year over the next 40 years, so the urban infill will make no difference.
The more you build, the more migrants they pump in to re-create the shortage.
Young people still won’t be able to afford a home in 20 years, but they will rent slum city boxes where double the people will overload the infrastructure.
Developers now want people within 800m of “town centres” to sell their homes so they can put up these units, and residents are being pressured to get out.
‘I’m trying to provide affordable housing - I don’t understand’
At the June 11 Housing Forum held by NSW MP Kellie Sloane, Woollahra Mayor Sarah Swan and Waverley Mayor William Nemesh (all Liberals), one man said he was trying to provide affordable housing but was being forced out.
“Leon” had bought his own home and invested in two rental units to fund his retirement - the dream of middle class Australia.
He said he was happy just to hold the assets for his future, and didn’t want to charge huge rents.
“My interest payments have gone up by $26,000 a year and my land tax from the state government just went up by an extra $3000 each apartment for the year. So I cannot pass that amount of money on to my tenants because my tenants can’t afford it,” he said.
“I don’t understand - you are expecting to make housing affordable, and to make the rental affordable, it doesn’t seem to make sense.”
Woollahra Mayor Sarah Swan said individuals were not going to be the ones to provide affordable housing.
“In answer to the question ‘who are we expecting to deliver the affordable housing’, so it’s not you … it’s going to be the developers.”
“Affordable housing” in NSW is a carrot that gives big developers more height, more floor-space, faster assessments and tax-breaks as long as at least 10 percent of the unit block qualifies for 15 years and is managed by a registered community housing provider.
“Affordable” means housing for very low to moderate income households, defined as a gross income ranging from under 50 per cent to 120 per cent of median income, with no more than 30 per cent paid in rent.
Only corporations, build-to-rent public-private partnerships and big property developers are going to be able to build it. Not mum-and-dad investors.
This follows the WEF corporatist model that crushes individuals and empowers “stakeholder” stitch-ups of developers, financiers, charity NGOs and Government.
Two men told the forum how developers were already gaming the system by demolishing older, cheaper housing to replace it with luxury expensive apartments, plus just enough “affordable” to qualify for the perks.
“Henry” said he lives on Edgecliff Road in a modest two-bedroom apartment. A developer lodged an application to demolish a two-story apartment building next to him using the “affordable” bonus.
The DA seeks to replace 16 older units with 19 luxury apartments. The infill affordable housing bonus was satisfied by three or four “affordable” units, he told the forum.
Henry is now tied up in the NSW Land and Environment Court, saying it would overshadow his home and create a sense of enclosure and loss of amenity for him and others.
Other home-owners who once enjoyed views and sunlight are waking up to block developments they are unable to fight.
“Phil” from Darling Point told of a developer who put in plans for a “monstrosity” behind his apartment block.
Several times the plans were re-submitted, each time increasing the height and depth. First it was four storeys, then five, then six, with a huge floor space around 1200sq m.
“Where does this stop? This is above us and it’s taking away all of our sunlight,” he said.
Phil’s block has 14 units that cost about $1 to $2 million each. He reckoned the new units behind him would sell for $7 to $14 million, the developer having knocked down a similar modest block. Thirty-two objections had been lodged, to no effect.
Liberals: advocating for US-style property taxes
In Question Time, I asked the panel what they were doing to raise awareness that it is excess migration (not supply issues) driving the crisis. Even though migration is a federal policy it’s a fair question because the housing crisis can never solved unless this is stopped - and both Liberal and Labor are equally guilty.
Member for Vaucluse Kellie Sloane acknowledged that in the last two financial years under a Federal Labor Government almost a million net migrants came in.
“That’s absolutely something we should be looking at,” she said.
“It’s something the Coalition has been raising alongside about four or five other policies that we have proposed in NSW.”
Ms Sloane said the Labor Government in NSW needed to have tough conversations with their federal counterparts so that significant adjustment is made in the short term until we can catch up with supply.
But ominously, she also said the Liberals were working on proposals for “tax reform to free up supply” ahead of the next state election, to be held on March, 13, 2027.
Tax reform to free up supply means “encouraging” homeowners off their land so developers can build units to increase housing stock.
It reveals an assumption that homeowners are the problem when in reality it makes no difference how many units are built: excess migration is the problem and more units just means more migrants will be imported to fill them.
Worse, Ms Sloane said the NSW Liberals still held a policy of an ongoing US-style property tax instead of a one-off stamp duty, a policy so wildly unpopular it was quietly dropped before the last NSW election and never heard from since.
Globalists love this tax because it destroys individual property ownership, leaving you to pay yearly rent to the government for a home you already paid to own - and it goes up every year with inflation. The elderly and income-poor are thus driven out of nice suburbs when they can’t afford it anymore.
To see how diabolical it is, one only needs to look at the story of Walter and Debbie Priebe of Pompano Beach, Florida.
They bought the termite-infested wreck from Debbie’s father in 2002. When they finished renovating it in 2023, their property was revalued up. Their yearly property tax went up from $15,000 per year to $90,000, and now they’re about to lose their home.
The NSW Liberals version of this was introduced in January 2023 and only lasted until June. They touted it as “saving millions” for first home buyers because the yearly impost at first is much smaller than the big whack of stamp duty up front (even though over 30 years you end up paying more and never stop paying).
It’s “a choice”, they said.
The idea was that it would stick to the property, so when sold the next buyer would also be stuck with it. The strategy was to get a critical mass of properties on the system, eventually leaving too few people to resist, then removing the “choice”.
It was so bad that in 2021, when it was first being floated, ordinary people swamped discussion boards to criticise it. I myself organised a petition against it, easily getting 50 people to sign (petition attached below). It was never submitted as the proposal appeared to be dropped and then covid took over.
But it seems the idea is not yet dead - and if the NSW Liberals win next election they will bring it back.
Here is what Ms Sloane said in reply to the last question of the night, from a gentleman who asked: “Should Labor lose the next election how could your party change some of these crazy (planning) rules? Can you change them or are they set in stone?”
Ms Sloane replied: “They (Labor) should (lose) over this issue as it’s not well thought-out. So we have a number of issues and we’re working on other proposals that will come out closer to the election but it’s around tax reform to free up supply.
Ms Sloane said they would have a $2 billion fund to incentivise councils with a carrot to pick their targets for infill density (rather than a one-size-fits-all approach like Labor).
“The other thing is that we have a first homebuyers choice policy where first homebuyers get a choice of stamp duty or an ongoing annual tax.”
Ms Sloane said much of the new policy was regulation not law, so some of it could be undone, but they would not be able to reverse developments started before the next election.
“But we’re looking at how we can improve planning regulation and these SEPPs (State Environmental Planning Principles).”
Worryingly, “Tom” from developer lobby YIMBY piped up and asked about reactivating plans for a superfluous train station at Woollahra, halfway between Edgecliff and Bondi Junction, that the community has repeatedly fought off.
YIMBY poses as a grassroots youth organisation wanting high-rise for affordable housing and hates heritage. Only supply exists in economics, not demand, for YIMBY, as economist Leith Van Onselen points out.
They want the redundant train station because developers could then stack high-rise on top.
Tom was warmly welcomed by Ms Sloane, although she rejected his idea.
“Such a good question, Tom, are you with the YIMBY’s? Nice to see you, thank you for being here, because we’ve got to build,” she said.
“Come see me, Tom.”
THEY WANT YOU IN UNITS SMALLER THAN A GARAGE
Australia is reeling after the Federal Labor Government imported the largest migration wave in the nation’s history, deliberately worsening the housing crisis.
As rents soar, state and federal governments have handed public taxes to private consortiums to build unit blocks, while jacking up costs for mum-and-dad homeowners with one or two investment properties - forcing them to sell the assets that would have funded their retirement, including from their super funds.
The strategy is to blame home-owners for the housing crisis, eventually forcing them to sell to developers for units - as if that would solve the problem.
The “problem” cannot be solved because it is deliberate.
New South Wales is at the forefront of destroying affordability with overseas arrivals.
Sydney, with 5.6 million inhabitants, now has a median house price of $1.5 million, and unit price of $860,000, as Michael Yarney reports. The 2021 Census revealed 43.2 per cent of the city’s now-5.6 million inhabitants were migrants while 52.4 percent had both parents born overseas.
Official figures say the Federal Government will import another 13.5 million over the next 40 years, which would require another Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane’s worth of housing and infrastructure.
Most Australians prefer to live in detached housing, not shoeboxes - so those who have bought homes near a “town centre” are now the enemy.
The real estate industry wants you packed in micro-units, with Western Australia leading the way, with a new $22 million unit block in Stirling St, Perth.
Of the 88 flats, 64 of them will be just 26sq m with the rest 41sq m lofts, with basement parking for only 12 cars but 44 bikes.
A double garage is typically 36sq m.
Lenders say they typically need a floor space of at least 40sq m excluding balcony to lend - but nobody can buy them anyway, it’s build-to-rent.
Urban Developer reports the site is owned by Scope Property Group. The developer who submitted the plans is Marprop, a Sydney-based developer with ESG and Net Zero all over their corporate website.
Readers of this publication will know The Teals, who represent WEF corporatists, have held stage-managed community forums encouraging home-owners to accept build-to-rent towers that nobody can own except large pension funds and institutional investors. The Teals, backed by billionaire Simon Holmes à Court, swept the recent Federal Election to sit almost level with the Nationals as the third largest (unofficial) party.
Home-owners may have looked to the NSW Liberals to behave like a real opposition, to campaign stridently against the cause of the problem, to rebuff the corporate lobby and to defend the right of citizens to keep the homes they paid for.
But the Liberal’s rejection of excess migration is relatively weak, even though they admit the problem when pushed. Their point of difference to Labor’s unit spree revolves only around the details, and doesn’t reject the core assumptions.
It was revealed on Wednesday that Liberal Party opposition is, essentially, Teals Lite. Since it was a forum to listen to the public, hopefully they might listen and change course.
Original petition from 2021 against US-style property tax below.
Globalists won the election and they are coming for your house
Importing 13.5 million people to create the next 40 years of housing crisis
Please share this story if you liked it, anyone is free to use, it is in the public interest, please attribute as: by Alison Bevege, Letters From Australia.
Visit me on Twitter/X at LettersFromOz
What is happening is alarming but you can take action by connecting with others and building community including at:
Good Knights, Golden Sheaf, Double Bay, Sydney, has speakers first Wednesday of every month at 6pm.
Tunks Park, North Sydney, every second Sunday (it’s on 29 June), 10am
Stand in the Park Coogee, south end, 10am first Sunday of the month
Free Speech Union of Australia: see website for events
Australians for Science and Freedom: see website for events, stories
Welcome to Dystopia for all the middle class, who borrowed money to purchase their dream home...They are likely to see their property values plummet and end up with negative equity. What a disaster. This has all been scripted and planned and it is obvious to anyone who cares to look that this is Agenda 2030 as promoted by the UN. We are suffering under an illusion of democracy, where neither of the major parties represent the people but are having their strings pulled by the World Bank, the UN, WEF, WHO and corporate billionaires.
I probably only have a decade or a decade and a half left on this planet. Unfortunately, in that time I'm likely to see the Australia I grew up in totally destroyed. I despair for the younger generation who are going to live in some dystopian sh*thole. Why is it that the political class in nearly all Western countries want to destroy their nations ?