Well, maybe thats a slight exaggeration but their front page on the 14th July did list a number of empty Toorak mansions with photos, addresses and how long they have been unoccupied, under the headline "Palatial spreads kept empty?That's rich"
http://www.theage.com.au/executive-style/luxury/palatial-spreads-kept-em...
For example it shows a photo of a rather nice looking mansion at 29 St Georges Rd in Toorak which has been empty since 1991. Another at 62 Hopetoun Rd has been unoccupied for decades. Apparently according to the article it is a nice way for the super rich to avoid neighbours, minimise capital gains tax on their permanent residence and resell the properties at a profit in a practice known as "land banking".
As the Age says "As Melbourne struggles with a housing shortage, some of the city's finest abodes are home to nothing more than dust and cobwebs." Seems a shame doesn't it, perhaps some of the thousands of people forced out of the private rental market due to inflated rents who are now homeless or living in crappy rooming houses should take a trip down to Toorak to find a more comfortable abode. Its also nice to see the The Age highlighting some of the outrageous privilege of the upper classes for a change.
Comments
Re: "The Age" Newspaper publishes squatting guide
What they didn't report on is what land speculation means in poorer suburbs. Rather than empty palatial mansions, we are plagued by empty blocks of land, accumulating rubbish and weeds.
While the property lobby continues to win massive state handouts in the form of land releases on the edge of the city, there are over 100,000 empty sites across Melbourne. This insane waste of one of our most precious resouces - the land - is one of the biggest drivers of the housing affordability crisis and the insane levels of urban sprawl.
How fair is it that most people go to work every day and then have to pay up to 30% tax on their earnings, yet people earning even more by 'investing' in land sit on their ass all year and pay at most 3-4%.
We need to move taxes off work and onto resources to capture the natural increases in wealth that our collective community efforts create.
Have a look around your neighbourhood and see just how many empty sites there are.
Free book "Melbourne 2030"
The estimates of the previous Government about this city housing/population were wrong. No panic, they were only wrong by 3 millions. A Monash University of Melbourne research has found.
Free book
http://publications.epress.monash.edu/doi/pdf/10.2104/m205000e
The research is published in a book, it is called Melbourne 2030 and it's free to download.