We don't always agree jacques, but I'm totally with you on this. Stamp duty is the most regressive, unfair tax around. Paying $15,000 or more in tax to move h

We don't always agree jacques, but I'm totally with you on this. Stamp duty is the most regressive, unfair tax around. Paying $15,000 or more in tax to move houses? Madness. How on earth is that considered fair, or a good thing for economic development? Particularly when the states agreed to drop stamp duty in return for the GST incomes. If you take it that demand for housing is pretty much unlimited (everyone wants their own dwelling, and everyone wants as much space as possible) then you must look at supply. Sure, cities like Sydney are geographically constrained, but this doesn't explain the high cost of housing places where there are no geographic constraints, only planning constraints. Historically, in Australia, the cost of the land was well below the cost of building a house on it. Now it easily exceeds 50% of the cost in some cases. The block of dirt under my feet cost 1500 pounds in the mid 1960's. Converted to a modern value, that is about $30,000. That value is out by a factor of probably 15-20 times. Which means, in rough terms, the land is 20 times more valuable now than it was back then. While some of this is attributable to improvement in services, population increase, etc etc, there isn't anywhere where you can buy a house block for $30,000 which is the inflation-adjusted price of the land as it was originally when the subdivision was opened. The high value of land can only have one factor - restriction in supply. Restriction of supply is caused by a combination of large land-holders drip-feeding blocks on to the market and in collusion with the state government putting major restrictions on the ability to release land for sale.