I only know one person who genuinely fits your description and he posts on another "SS" forum.
Apologies about the length of the following post and so that people do not waste their time reading it; if you are not interested in personal opinion / information then I suggest you don't bother reading it.
Anyway I have the words to that; 'your so vein' song rattling around in my head so I will assume the above is 'probably about me'?
If you mean me, my issues lie with government policy making it so difficult to do anything in this fine country. If it sounds like I am crying poor, I guess I am, but it will be the whole country crying poor if the government continues to forget precisely what a competitive advantage is and how stupid it is to handcuff your own population with stupid policy.
Yes I would prefer the government to streamline development and infrastructure deployment and yes it would benefit those looking to buy their first home at the expense of those who bought before development was considered by the community as a mortal sin who have profited from urban consolidation and other policy responses to community anger over development.
I have for too long been involved in wasting taxpayers money and seen it wasted in the construction sector where before you can do anything you might spend 10s of thousands relocating a handfull of lizards at 20k a pop by the time you find the buggers. Far better spent on habitat restoration elsewhere but anyway I digress....
Anyway in this country the government sponge off the private sector which works as long as you have a powerhouse like the resources sector which we have in this country keeping the economy ticking along in spite of government policy. Certainly this country is not the way it is because of good government policy and investment in the infrastructure the private sector needs to be competitive with the rest of the world. Due to my firm belief that the population of a country is only as prosporous as it is as a result of the infrastructure and education / tenacity of its people I believe we will not know what hit us if and when the investment in our commodities sector slows.
We will look back on this era of opportunity, more accurately opportunity squandered in the coming years and realise we had a chance to build this country and instead we made it so bloody difficult for anyone to build anything that at the end of a massive mineral push on our trade figures we are left with no government savings, small private sector savings and very little to show for it in infrastructure.
Anyway all that aside why am I here? As I save a deposit it has dawned on me that even if you have a bearish outlook on housing a PPOR is still a good "investment" should you have a large deposit. Even assuming 0% nominal house price growth (pretty bearish) and 7% interest it is line ball with renting if you can fund the entire house purchase due to the tax treatment of savings. Compared to sticking it in a deposit account and getting 4% after tax return saving 25k on rent per annum seems like a good enough proposition to put your money. To be clear I do not have a 500k deposit, but as I save more and as my wifes marginal rate of tax ticks up (this is where we save our coin in my wifes name, lucky I trust her!) it gets to a point where buying becomes a proposition. DO I agree with such a tax system on savings? Maybe not but the moves to change it are so marginal as a result of the henry review I don't hold up hopes of it ever changing substantively.
So even being bearish there does come a time that buying a PPOR makes sense if you also include still tangible but not financial things. I know how much those who do not invest in homes are derided here (only by some) but even a PPOR is a significant investment if you like looking at such things in those terms. For mine it will be around the 500k mark. The biggest investment I will ever make and given the time spent on such purchases when I make them in my employment I think it is worth investing some time in the same for my personal acquisitions. Also in the long term I would buy residential properties in capital cities as for a retirement vehicle they make a lot of sense being both an inflationh hedge and a source of income. The yields just do not justify it in my opinion at present. Again this is different to a PPOR decision.
So to summarise my position while I do not think buying PPOR's on high LVR's is a prudent thing to do including for our financial system to allow it I am realistic enough to understand that our taxation system on savings encourages the purchase of a home if only to allow you to avoid that after tax expense of rent.
Anyway I don't plan on buying till at least after July this year when our 2 FHSA mature (one place your savings are not taxed ridiculously!) and more than likely end of 2011 when our lease expires, so short of being banned I plan on posting here on occasions for the next several months. Maybe my 0.5 posts per day count might even get higher...
