The Australian real estate boom has been going on - unabated, as they say - for decades now. I don't think it will ever stop until negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions stop, but it would take a very brave political party to stop them.
Even little Nelligen is gripped in the frenzy as is evidenced by two sales just before Christmas: 3 Sproxtons Lane sold just two days before Christmas for $2,000,000, and 11 Wharf Street across the river which had only been bought for $800,000 three years earlier, sold on the same day for $1,180,000. A very nice tax-free capital gain if you can get it!
It still fades in comparison to the almost seven-bagger when the old Steampacket Hotel, a derelict old building left to rot ever since the new Steampacket Hotel opened on the Kings Highway, had been picked up for a mere $240,000 in July 2012 and then resold ten years later for $1,601,000 - click here. The owners couldn't have made that sort of money if they'd been selling beer! There's still money in them thar hills.
Which is how wealth is now generated in this country. Education and hard work are no longer the main determinants of how wealthy you are; now it comes down to where you live and what sort of house you own or will inherit from your parents. It means that Australia is far less of an egalitarian meritocracy than it used to be when I arrived here in 1965.
