Writers @ Stanton: Alan Kohler on The Great Divide

One of the great mysteries of Australian life is that a land of sweeping plains, with one of the lowest population densities on the planet, has a shortage of land for houses. As a result, Sydney is the second most expensive place to buy a house on Earth, after Hong Kong.

The escalation in house prices is a pain that has altered Australian society; it has increased inequality and profoundly changed the relationship between generations – between those who have a house and those who don’t. It has caused a rental crisis, a dearth of public housing and a mortgage crunch.

Things went seriously wrong at the start of the 21st century, when there was a huge and permanent rise in the price of housing. This updated and expanded edition of the bestselling Quarterly Essay adds material on homelessness, how much house prices in each city need to come down to be affordable, and lessons from overseas.

Alan Kohler is the founder of Eureka Report, which has been integrated into the website Intelligent Investor. Alan is also the finance presenter on ABC News and a columnist for The New Daily. A former editor of The Age and The Australian Financial Review, he has written for The Australian, AFR, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

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