by Guy Lerner
October 31, 2003
I live in a little sleeper town in Australia called Sydney. At least, that’s what it was a few short decades ago. Today it’s considered one of the world’s fastest-growing conglomerations of human wealth.
Citizen’s
Revolt
The
transformation, for most Sydneysiders, has been remarkable, but then again, they
only need look at
themselves to know how they got their city in this big old mess in the first
place. Like rabid dogs to a helpless rabbit, they’ve attacked the precious
foreshores of their famous harbor with such vigor that the fact that anything is
left at all for Joe Public to enjoy is a small miracle in itself.
No, I’m not talking about wanton destruction, simply a civilized flash of the wallet that’s bought up every square yard of buyable property, so that in reality the majority of Sydneysiders now live closer to neighboring towns than their own CBD.
If you ever
needed confirmation that Sydney’s gone stark-raving mad, just pick up a local
paper and run your finger through the headlines for the word "property." It
should take about three seconds for the first instance to come up, and about
three hours by the time you've ticked off the others. Then turn to page two and
carry on...
Boom,
Boom, Boom
Sydney
- like most of the "world cities" on the map,
or so I'm told - is in the throes
of a property boom that's seen median house prices shoot up by more than 20% in
the last year alone. Everywhere you look investors are locked in a feeding
frenzy over scraps of land, however miniscule, old, barren or dilapidated, as
long as they're within the confines of the so-called metropolis - which, you'll
be glad to know, stretches for 150km north to south. (It would stretch a similar
distance east to west if it weren't for the unfortunate geographic oddity of the Blue Mountains in the way).
Of course this is great news if you happen to have inherited a house from
grandma Ruth in affluent Bondi, which looks like a third-world shack but is
worth more than a third-world country. For mere mortals, however, it's nothing
short of frustrating.
The sad part of this really sad story is that property fever has gripped the
“Aussie” psyche by the unmentionables. Turn on any of the three main network
channels on public TV (Seven, Nine and 10) at prime time and you won't find the
typical mix of cop shows, reality TV or courtroom dramas. Instead you'll get a
choice of three locally produced and acted actuality shows on...you guessed
it...property!
I kid you not. Take your pick from
Ground Force
(a renovation program) to
Hot Property
(an auction program) and
The Block (a
fusion reality show where couples play against each other to renovate a Bondi
apartment). Then there's
Burke's Back Yard
and
Backyard Blitz,
Renovation Rescue,
and even - I swear this is true- a show that features the casts from all the
major DIY and renovation shows working together to fix up a dump so the owners
can flog it to some unsuspecting or uncannily naive sod for a perfectly
illogical profit!
Did I mention Changing Rooms, Our House, Location Location, Room for
Improvement, and Auction Squad? Sorry, must have missed those last night.
Show
Business
The
irony is that all of this is sold Sydney’s
willful inhabitants as
"entertainment". This is supposed to be what ordinary
Aussies do for "fun." We bite our nails and cover our eyes as some fool from Wagga Wagga manages to offload a hardly-habitable semi he bought for $50,000 two
years ago for ten times that at auction because it happens to be where the
yuppies are biting.
It's gone so loony that the most popular way of buying property in this city is
- as you must have picked up by now - on auction! You'd think normal people
would be bidding the price of a property down, not up.
I
was reading the
Sydney Morning Herald yesterday when an article caught my eye (it
didn't hurt). The headline splashed: "Thanks a million - but I really need 10."
More good news, woo-hoo! It continued:
"A million dollars will not necessarily make you feel like a millionaire any
more. In some parts of Sydney it could be just enough to pay off the mortgage
and renovate your kitchen. Which explains why Sydneysiders are more likely than
country dwellers to opt for long-odds, big-win lottery options such as Powerball."
(Powerball - for the non-Sydneysiders among you - is the Big Kahuna of state
lotteries. This weekend's prize tops $19 million).
The article goes on to explain why more and more people living in Sydney are
choosing the statistically impossible odds of the state lotteries over the
already impossible odds of smaller scratch-type jackpots (that max out at a
paltry $1,000,000) because they want to live near enough to city to avoid the
two hour bus commute to work. (Just the fact that you still have to work with a
million bucks in your pocket should tell you where this is going).
Conclusion
"Last week NSW Lotteries paid out nearly $30 million to two players: a sales
manager in his 40s from Sydney won $13.7 million, and a retired woman from Wagga
Wagga won $15 million. The Sydney man plans to buy a waterfront property. The
Wagga woman will donate money to disadvantaged youngsters and pay off her
childrens' homes."
Believe me when I tell you this is one crazy town.
Copyright © 2003
