Saturday 1 February 2014

Greens do not "get" Sydneysiders' love of real estate

As a metropolitan daily should be, the Sydney Morning Herald "gets" the fact - unlovable or endearing as the case may be in your mind - that residents of Sydney treat real estate and everything associated with it like something akin to a religion, and the feature story - with video - on the website since yesterday with talking heads speculating on how the market will go in 2014 is right on the money (so to speak). The Sydney real estate market rose by 15 percent in 2013, making up for losses over the previous two-and-a-half years, and making a lot of people very happy. It was a bumper Christmas for retailers, we should note.

The video is especially cute because it has the experts - the real estate agents - sitting in front of a backdrop showing the city's ultimate piece of real estate: the Opera House. Interleaved with the speakers are shots of houses to be auctioned this weekend, including the expected sale price, number of bedrooms etcetera.

In my tweetfeed a couple of days ago someone connected with the Greens complained about the prominence given on the Sydney Morning Herald's website to real estate stories, accusing the outlet of talking up the market and, worse, of doing so in an interested way.
I wish the @SMH would stop beating the drum for rising property prices. Who does it benefit? Reliant on income from Domain maybe?
The person who tweeted this is a local politician for the Greens, so presumably can stand in to represent the true views of the party as it's currently constituted. In my mind the tweet just illustrates in a graphic and striking way how out of touch the party is with the opinions of the majority of people living in Sydney, that rough and unruly city. For me, it's another nail in the coffin of disenchantment. It's just on a year since I posted about how I thought the Greens had lost the plot, especially in an economic sense. The little aside by my Greens councillor friend on Twitter just makes the hammer want to strike with greater force.

1 comment:

DaKangaroo said...

It may be nice for people who already own a house but the Greens seem to be coming from the POV of people who do not own a house (which is good, someone needs to stand up for us). For those people, the rising prices of houses is a horrible thing, because it means that the dream of owning a house is slipping further and further away.

Constantly rising house prices is not a good thing for everyone!