HOUSES are expected to become thousands of dollars cheaper for first-time buyers in Victoria under a cut to stamp duty in today's state budget.
They are? Expected by whom? People who've never been to an auction? Since buyers - particularly first-home buyers who haven't built up equity in the overheated property market - have been bidding up to the maximum the bank will allow them, won't this cut simply be absorbed at auctions? In which case the extra money will actually go to pre-existing house-owners, and help them outbid first home-buyers in subsequent auctions?
The Opposition has been hammering the Government on the record figure, claiming the levy is pushing Melbourne towards becoming the least affordable city in Australia in which to buy a home.
That's because of all the people who own more than one home, and the lack of sensible transport infrastructure to new developments so that people can live further out and still commute to work in the city. Stamp duty has nothing to do with it - if it has any effect, it's discouraging property speculation, which is surely to the advantage of first home buyers as they compete with the bidding power of existing owners' equity.
But of course they'd pretend a duty cut which helps the people who already have homes is actually in the interest of "housing affordability" for the people they've excluded. Please tell me voters aren't stupid enough to buy it.
Meanwhile, what a lazy bit of reporting by the Age. They couldn't even get anyone to cost the proposed discount. That money's coming out of the budget somewhere - either a service is being cut or some other tax is being raised. Or a surplus is being squandered. Which is it?
