05 July, 2013

Asian Financed Developers Build Poor Quality Apartment Towers



Our Governments currently cannot stop Asian investors building tall apartment towers in our cities says the head of the Victorian Public Service, Andrew Tongue, even though planning experts say the apartments are often of poor quality.

Marcus Spiller, a well known planner, says that many city apartments often are not very good adding that we are creating housing stock that is pretty ordinary and not very adaptable. One of the reasons is that Asian developers do not need to have their shoddy apartments pre-sold like Australian developers financed by Australian Banks do, because offshore funding is not subject to the same checks and balances that Australian Banks demand.

With around 50% of Melbourne's city apartments sold off to overseas investors ( in Sydney the percentage is nearer 80%)the whole process is handled overseas and is going to leave us with poor housing stock that will require massive maintenance in the future. 

So what will happen then when the Body Corporate fees skyrocket to cover these costs and no one wants to rent or buy these shoddy apartments.

It is time that Australia woke up to the problems associated with selling off our cities to overseas investors. And let us not forget the increasing amount of our farmland being sold off to overseas 
investors but that's another story. (See the post "Selling off the Farm" below)

Wake up Australia !

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