Realee.com.au

Realee.com.au
Australia's Realee Big Real Estate Search Engine

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Australia's new home for buying, selling, renting and browsing Australian Real Estate.

We're about to launch into the mid-season compulsion with renovation programs. It seems only moments since the last great furore over Channel 9's The Block, which hit our screens mid last year. During the course of the open house inspections, more than 300,000 people queued outside the homes to take a sticky beak over the intricacies of design. Details of the price initially paid, previous owners and subsequent buyers were fished out and endless analysis followed. Such was the furore that many were convinced sales expectation would be achieved. However, the finale was heralded a disaster. Only one property sold under the hammer and when renovation, stamp duty and subsequent sales costs were totted up, none of the homes - in and of themselves - made a profit. However, that wasn't the point. Far exceeding expectation, it was the station's highest-rating show of 2011 and factoring in the sponsorship and endless publicity, the "owner" (Channel 9) could have given away the homes and still made a healthy profit.

Obsession with property isn't unique to Australia, however it's manifested itself as one of the great foundations of our culture to the point of being heralded - above everything else - as "The Great Australian Dream". Go out on a Saturday in Melbourne and you'll see street auctions attended by 50 or so people, of which threequarters will be there for the fascination value alone, intently concentrated on the numbers and either comparing their own properties against the result or dreaming of pursuing a similar acquisition. Although the desire to own property doesn't set us apart as a nation and no one relishes the thought of paying a landlord well into old age, other countries have accepted a culture far more adapted to renting than owning and consequently overall demand for the purchase of property has been lower along with price appreciation.

Australia's obsession is built into the very fabric of our culture. Even the modest backyard cubby house has started to take on grand proportions, with companies specialising in building "eco-friendly" models complete with solar panels and plasma TVs. For those interested, they can fetch prices, up to, and in excess of $15,000 - and when you see the work involved, there's no surprise why. At the root of this obsession lays the widespread acceptance that property always goes up in value.

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