Claims that the "great Aussie dream" of home ownership is dead are pure sensationalism: Terry Ryder

We have a new candidate for the title of “worst real estate article of the year”.

 
Unsurprisingly, it appeared in Australia’s most dismal newspaper, The Daily Telegraph.

 
The headline claimed that families have given up on the “great Aussie dream”. You can be fairly sure that when an article starts with that most tired of clichés, what follows is likely to be nonsense. The article did not disappoint.

 
It relied on another great cliché of journalism, that you never let the facts get in the way of a good story. This piece made a number of startling claims, but provided no evidence to support them.

 
It began with this statement: “An alarming number of Australian families are losing sight of the home ownership dream, being forced into long-term rental situations and struggling to provide security for their children.”

 
That’s a pretty big statement. I searched the article for information that backed it up, but there was none. No figures to support the “alarming number” claim. Nothing to justify the claim that large numbers of families are “struggling to provide security for their children”.

 
The second paragraph talked about “soaring property prices”. Again it didn’t provide any figures, which is a shame because I’d love to know where property prices have soared any time in the past three years.

 
The only markets that have achieved double-digit growth in any of the years since 2010 have been regional towns and cities, mostly those boosted by the resources sector. (Chinchilla in Queensland, for example, has averaged 10.8% annual growth in recent years, according to Australian Property Monitors figures).

 
The third paragraph says that “the situation is particularly severe in NSW”. Why? Apparently, because NSW has a third of the nation’s renters. Well, you would expect NSW to have a third of nation’s renters because NSW has a third of the nation’s population.

 
NSW is in line with national averages, whereby roughly a third of households rent and two-thirds own their homes, with or without mortgages. It’s been that way for a long time.

 
Paragraph six begins with this: “News that the home ownership dream is fading comes …” Really? What news that the home ownership dream is fading? Certainly it’s not contained in this article, which presents zero evidence to support the claim.

 
The article then moves on to blame the planning system for the crisis they say exists, but for which they have presented no supporting information.

 
Sensationalism at its worst and not one, not two, but three Telegraph writers interviewed their keyboards to come up with this pile of twaddle.

 
Yes, this anorexic article totalling 15 shallow paragraphs required contributions from three non-journalists. There was a triple byline, as if this was an epic of investigative journalism.

 
It was the antithesis of journalism, but sadly typical of print media’s coverage of real estate issues. No wonder the two major media organisations have been sacking journalists by the thousands recently. If this is the best three colluding writers can come up with, they don’t deserve their jobs.

 
So, I repeat my comment from last week on Property Observer. If you want to be informed about real estate, stop reading newspapers and start looking elsewhere for information.

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Terry Ryder is the founder of hotspotting.com.au and you can contact Terry via email or on Twitter.