property | Paul Wallbank - Communications Professional

Australia and Alan Bond

Deceased tycoon and embezzler Alan Bond’s life story provides a good parallel for Australia’s economic development

Last week convicted fraudster and one time Australian national hero Alan Bond passed away. In many respects Bond’s rise, fall and comfortable dotage tells us much about Australia today.

Originally born in England, Bond was a ‘ten pound pom’ – like this writer and two of Australia’s last three Prime Ministers – whose family took advantage of subsidised immigration programs to leave the cold climate and dismal British economy for sunnier, more prosperous parts.

Building the Australian dream

In Australia Bond prospered. On leaving school he became a sign writer and set up a business where he quickly gained a reputation for sharp practices and cutting corners. However as with much of his generation real wealth was to be made in property speculation.

As Australian cities expanded through the 1960s, developers and speculators were at the forefront of the nation’s economic growth. Perth, Bond’s home town, doubled in size between 1961 and 71 and the once dodgy sign maker made his mark as a wheeler and dealer as he traded properties and build his fortune.

As the 1980s began a cashed up Bond was ready to take advantage of the economic orthodoxy of the time that to compete internationally, Australian businesses had to consolidate domestically to gain the scale required to be global players.

Bond added to his claims in 1983 when he wrested the America’s Cup out of the cold dead hands of Long Island’s Newport Yacht Club. Suddenly businessmen were the national heroes and Australians, particularly politicians, fell over themselves to bask in the glow of the nation’s entrepreneurial summer.

Dancing on the world stage

Around the time of the America’s Cup win the newly elected Hawke Labor government deregulated the Australian banking industry providing a ready supply of hungry financiers prepared to fund the global ambitions of Bond and his contemporaries.

The rest of the decade saw Bond leading a wave of Australian entrepreneurs using easy money to build international empires. Bond himself ended up building one of Australia’s brewery duopoly, holding prime Hong Kong property, buying the nation’s most popular TV station and owning a Chilean telephone company.

Naturally much of his money ended up in Switzerland and Lichtenstein, something that would work in his favour early in the 1990s.

The larrikin streak

Bond’s disregard for the law, investors and anyone unfortunate to get between his cronies and a bag of money – politely described as a ‘larrikin streak’ by many – continued as regulators and governments indulged his behaviour.

One good example of the free pass he received from Australian regulators in the 1980s were his insider dealings with his then mistress Diana Bliss, the latter of whom exquisitely timed a purchase of a small energy exploration company stocks in 1988 a week before Bond Corporation announced a take over offer.

Regulators at the time dismissed any claim of insider trading after being assured that neither Bond nor Bliss would ever countenance such behaviour, the Sydney Morning Herald later reported.

When the luck runs out

Eventually the 1980s Australian economic miracle and the entrepreneurs leading it proved to be chimeras based upon property valuations. When the 1990 downturn hit, the rampaging Aussie business heroes all quickly fell as their overindebted empires collapsed.

Bond’s personal fortune however survived thanks to his judiciously salting away assets controlled by loyal advisors. His 1994 bankruptcy hearing ended in farce when he successfully convinced the court he was suffering dementia and couldn’t remember anything of his business dealings.

He couldn’t stay too far ahead of the courts however and ultimately Bond served two prison terms totalling four years for dishonestly pillaging companies to keep his operation afloat.

At the same time Bond was being chased through the courts, Australia’s banks were licking the financial wounds incurred from their irresponsible exposure to the nation’s entrepreneurs. The lessons they learned define modern Australia.

Bearing the brunt

The country’s small business community eventually bore the brunt of the Australian banks’ losses as lenders’ balance sheets were rebuilt through high interest rates, massively increased fees and charges and tightened lending criteria. Many of those high fees and rates continue to cripple Australian business twenty-five years later.

Adding to the Aussie small business sector’s woes, the 1998 Basel I Accords were coming into force favoring property lending over business finance. Increasingly it became harder for any Australian businessperson to raise money from local banks while property speculators were welcome.

Over the next twenty years the result was stark. One chart from the Macrobusiness website illustrates the huge growth in Australian residential property lending and the stagnation of business finance since 1991. Only at one stage, in 2008, has business lending matched the levels of the late 1990s.

That shift to an economy based upon property prices, particularly speculation on residential accommodation, has served Australia well with the nation not experiencing a recession since the 1990s downturn.

The Australian economic miracle

Australia’s success allowed Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens to sneer in 2010 that Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ warnings about the Australian economy lack of diversity were misguided and foolish – the mining boom coupled with never ending property price growth guaranteed the nation’s prosperity.

In this respect, all Australians have become Alan Bond. Just as the bold riders of the 1980s boom based their future on property valuations so too have Australian households and the entire economy thirty years later.

Hopefully for Australians in general it will end better than it did for Alan Bond in 1996.

One though should not weep too much for Alan Bond, after being released in 2000 he quietly rebuilt his empire and in 2008 BRW magazine estimated his wealth at $265 million and named him among the 200 wealthiest people in Australia.

Time will tell if Australians share the deceased tycoon’s luck but in a way we’ve all become little Alan Bonds now in our dependence upon the valuations of our real estate holdings and the indulgence of those financing our lifestyles.

It may well be having a few bob hidden away in Switzerland might the best way for Australia’s indebted homeowners to protect their future.

Daily links – Chinese property developers go onto internet

Chinese internet use and smart phone manufacturers dominate today’s links along with Microsoft and Uber’s latest business changes

Today’s links have a distinctly Chinese flavour around them with a look at how the country’s smartphone manufacturers are coming to dominate their market, Tencent’s plans for global domination and how property developers are looking to the internet to save their falling sales.

Uber and Microsoft make their regular appearances to round out the links in their changes to billing and security.

Chinese property developers turn to the web

Faced with declining sales, Chinese property developers embrace – the Internet!

How Chinese smartphone makers are beginning to dominate the market

The rise of China’s smartphone makers: 10 of the top 17 smartphone manufacturers now come from China.

An interview with Tencent

Business Insider has an intriguing interview with one of the VPs of Chinese internet giant Tencent.

In his Q&A, S. Y. Lau discusses how Chinese communities are seeing their incomes rise due to the internet. One of the famous case studies of connectivity are India’s Kerala fishermen who used SMS to arbitrage their market. We may be seeing a similar story with Chinese tea farmers.

Microsoft restrict warning of patches to paying customers

In a short term money grabbing exercise, Microsoft have unveiled a plan to only inform enterprise customers of upcoming security patches. My prediction is this won’t last.

Uber cuts prices

Car hiring service Uber has cut its fares in thirty US cities while guaranteeing drivers their incomes. This is probably a move to keep competitors like Lyft at bay.

Links of the day – redesigning the car and South China Mall.

Interesting links include Mercedes’ vision of a driverless car, an analysis of the ill fated South China Mall’s flaws and how Amazon is reorganising its R&D efforts after the failure of the Amazon Fire.

The CES extravaganza continues in Las Vegas with a wave of announcement, most of which I’m ignoring, however the motor industry continues to show off new developments with Mercedes displaying their vision of how a driverless car will look.

Other interesting links today include an analysis of the ill fated South China Mall’s flaws and how Amazon is reorganising its R&D efforts after the failure of the Amazon Fire.

Mercedes redesigns the car

A little while back I suggested that we could do better in redesigning the driverless car – Mercedes have gone ahead and done it.

Mercedes’ redesign of the driverless car indicates just what can be done when we rethink what passengers will need in the vehicles of the future.

Ford recalls a vehicle for a UI upgrade

Ford has recalled its Lincoln MKC SUV models for a software upgrade after discovering drivers were shutting down the cars by accident.

What’s notable with this story is how software changes are now one of the main reasons for recalling vehicles and how design flaws in an automobile’s computer programs are relatively quickly discovered and resolved.

We will probably find in the near future car manufacturers will carry out the upgrades remotely rather than ask owners to bring their vehicles into dealerships.

A long running security flaw is exposed

In August 2013 a security researcher warned UK online greeting card vendor Moonpig that its system exposed up to six million users’ account and financial details. Until Monday the company had ignored him. This is a tale of classic management disregard for customer security and one area where business culture needs to dramatically change.

Rumours of an AOL – Verizon merger

It’s a speculative story but if a merger between US telco Verizon and former internet giant AOL goes ahead it may mark another wave of telcos moving into content services, although it’s hard not to think that Verizon could spend its money more wisely.

After a flop, Amazon restructures its R&D

The Amazon Fire was by all measures a miserable flop as a smartphone however it seems the company learned some important lessons from the device’s market failures. Instead of abandoning its research efforts, the online behemoth is increasing it’s R&D budget and reorganising its development division.

Design fails of the South China Mall

South China Mall just south of Guangzhou has been the poster child of Chinese malinvestment during the nation’s current boom. In a blog post from 2011, a shopping mall expert visits the development and points out the major design faults in the complex which may well have doomed the project from the beginning.

Tony Hsieh’s field of dreams

Can Tony Hsieh build Las Vegas into a tech hub?

Stepping off the bus at Las Vegas’ Fairmont Street in the early morning is a reminder of how seedy nightlife areas look in the harsh daylight.

The reason for being in Downtown Las Vegas on a warm Monday morning was to tour Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project, a scheme to revitalise the rundown and neglected town centre of the gambling and convention mecca.

One of the striking things about Las Vegas is how much of it pretends to be somewhere else; The Luxor, New York, New York, The Ballagio. It’s almost as if the fantasy land of the American Dream is a little embarrassed about where it is.

Not that the tourists are embarrassed with millions pouring in every year to enjoy the gambling, entertainment and the pasteurized sin on offer along Las Vegas’ glitzy strip of mega casinos.

Five miles north the mega casinos and bright lights, the luck runs out. The best thing locals have to say about Las Vegas’ downtown district is “it is better than it was.”

One of the reasons it’s better is because of one man — Tony Hsieh, the founder of online shoe retailer Zappos. Hsieh moved his business to Las Vegas because, in the entrepreneur’s view, San Francisco was ‘hostile towards company service.’

The Downtown Project is the result of a promised $350 million investment by Hsieh to invigorate the city centre of Las Vegas.

However the project has hit problems with Hseih recently stepping down from his position, layoffs being announced and community programs being cut back, leading critics to claim the project is in jeopardy.

So a tour of the project during a recent visit to Las Vegas was well timed to judge how things are going.

The tour starts with the small group meeting at The Window, an arts and meeting space on the ground floor of the Ogden residential tower which closed down in September as part of the scheme’s recent cutbacks.

Gathering in the room with our tour leader Maggie is a somewhat spooky experience with all The Window’s furniture, books and exhibits intact as on the day they were left at the end of the space’s six month lifespan.

Leaving the room’s contents intact and unpacked doesn’t engender confidence that The Window will find a new home. In all, starting the tour in the abandoned workspace is an unsettling start.

After a quick explanation of The Downtown Project, Maggie leads takes us around the corner to the Ogden’s residential entrance where we ride the elevator to Tony Hsieh’s upper level apartment.

The building doesn’t have a fourth or fourteenth floor; something familiar to anybody who’s lived in a city where property developers are courting Chinese investors — the sound of the word ‘four’ in Mandarin and Cantonese has unlucky overtones.

On the way up to the Twenty-Third floor apartment it’s also an opportunity to gauge the dynamic between the residents of the building; in reviews of the complex, many residents not associated with Hsieh’s projects have complained they have been marginalised.

Once in Hsieh’s apartment, it’s an impressive look into the domestic life of a modern successful internet tycoon with common workrooms, open plan living and a jungle themed party room featuring a hanging garden.

The most important thing about Hsieh’s apartment is it gives a sense of perspective of the project with views across the downtown district, a panorama of the Las Vegas strip with the huge casinos rearing out the suburbia and the refurbished Goldspike Casino that is becoming a community hub of sorts.

Hsieh’s apartment also gives some ideas of the plans the tycoon has, particularly the Life Is Beautiful festival that Maggie promises will be a “combination of Burning Man and South by South West.”

Returning to street level from Hsieh’s apartment does give the impression there are two breeds of residents in The Ogden; the Zappos and Downtown project crowd who treat the other residents with polite disdain.

The dismissive attitude towards non-tech outsiders is common among the technology startup communities around the world but that doesn’t make it any less jarring for those living with it in their building.

Stepping out into the mid morning heat of Las Vegas, we go around the corner to the Beat Coffeehouse, part of the Emergency Arts Collective that’s based in a disused medical centre and which, interestingly, isn’t part of Hsieh’s downtown project.

A block further along is The Container Park, the retail and entertainment hub of the Downtown Project that welcomes visitors with a giant preying mantis, shown at the beginning of this post.

The container park is an interesting rag tag collection of independently owned food and retail outlets, a test laboratory for hospitality and bricks-and-mortar shopping outlets. In the mid morning heat it’s somewhat deserted.

Unfortunately that’s where our official tour concluded and it was time to explore the dubious delights of downtown Las Vegas on our own. The locals are right, there isn’t much.

Later that evening I returned to see how The Downtown Project and downtown Las Vegas itself do at night. The difference with daytime is spectacular.

Getting off the bus at the Fremont Street Experience with its roofed in mall the boasts the world’s biggest video screen is a great difference from its dowdy daytime appearance.

Fremont Street jumps with the tame bacchanalia that’s the hallmark of Las Vegas; all the false unfulfillable promise of sexual and economic success that defines modern America.

The three block walk from West Fremont street to the Container Park is stark; while the Beat Coffeehouse is packed with drinkers enjoying the live band, the street is dark and quiet; it’s quite easy to feel uncomfortable on the short walk.

At the Container Park itself, things aren’t exactly busy. A few families play on the central green while a band plays. Few of the food stalls are selling anything and most of the shops are closing at 8pm. While it’s a Monday night, it’s not encouraging.

Leaving Downtown Las Vegas on the WAX express bus — fifteen minutes to the MGM Grand down the interstate rather than the hour plus trudge down the strip on the Deuce — it’s a good opportunity to reflect on a superficial tour of the Downtown Project.

For young families wanting to move from the wallet crushing costs of San Francisco and Silicon Valley, Las Vegas could be an option but it’s going to require more business than Zappos and a small cluster of startups.

The city is going to need more drop in spaces like The Windows — something like Google Campus is going to be needed to encourage smart young entrepreneurs to make the journey and try their luck.

Another aspect is more accommodation is needed as right now the housing stock around the downtown district is either run down or overpriced — while cheap by San Francisco or New York standards prices don’t reflect the fact Las Vegas is not an economic powerhouse like the two cities.

The Ogden building is an example of everything that is wrong in the current global property mania with high priced, high maintenance apartments aimed at rich investors rather than ordinary people and their families.

For residents transport also remains a problem although Las Vegas’ public bus system is surprisingly good, one suspects the service is subsidised by the immensely popular Deuce double decker buses carrying crowds of tourists up and down the strip.

To get a San Francisco or Brooklyn type critical mass into the city requires a high density population and a deeper local tax base which is something beyond Hsieh’s power.

Las Vegas also has the problem that it is in a competitive field with towns like Kansas City and Des Moines among others all vying to attract young entrepreneurs to their low cost communities. Just being cheaper than Mountain View or South of Market is not enough on it’s own.

Overall, it’s not hard to leave Las Vegas with a feeling that the Downtown Project is floundering. To build a community like that envisioned by Tony Hsieh takes more that $350 million and a few years work; it’s a lifetime commitment and it needs several generations of funding.

That the Fremont Street Experience and The Beat Coffeehouse are both jumping while the Container Park is quiet also tells us that building a community requires diverse groups and that no one guiding agency, private or public can build a thriving industrial centre.

It is possible that Zappos and Hsieh may plant the seed for Las Vegas to become a technology and business hub, but there’s a long way to go and it will need more than one man to drive it.

“Build it and they will come,” was something I heard constantly about the plans to invigorate the city’s centre from its supporters and Las Vegas residents. Whether the Downtown Project is Tony Hsieh’s field of dreams is for history to judge.

Rent doesn’t matter to startups

Rent doesn’t seem to matter for startups — for the moment

Following yesterday’s post about the factors behind cities like New York, London and San Francisco becoming startup hubs, a friend asked “let me gues — cheap rents?”

In truth it’s the opposite; none of the cities cited as startup centres are cheap places to live or work and London is usually towards the top of the most expensive places on the planet.

That rents aren’t a huge factor is possibly because the typical tech startup is a lean operation with a small team crammed into a crowded location.

One suspects though there are limits to how much a business conserving its cash will pay — you don’t see many startups based in A-grade locations alongside big law firms and banks — and this may be the weaknesses of these big cities.

Certainly in London’s Silicon Alley the complaint is the days of cheap rent are long gone and newer startups have to base themselves in other locations across the city.

Overall, rents are important but they aren’t the critical factor in developing a tech sector hub. Whether that remains the case depends upon how the industry develops.

San Francisco’s stuggle with property prices

The current protests against tech workers in San Francisco are part of a wider economic problem

“You’re not wanted here” is the message from San Francisco residents protesting against tech workers and tycoon moving into the city.

Over the last year the protests against the ‘Google Buses’ that ferry tech company workers from San Francisco to Silicon Valley has steadily ratched up with protests against high profile individuals, people vomiting on the buses and Google Glass wearers getting their devices smashed.

Around the world, from London and Berlin to Auckland and Hong Kong, cities are worrying about the diversity of their cities as the global asset bubble inflates property prices beyond the reach of ordinary citizens.

In many respects San Francisco is probably unique in its relationship to Silicon Valley and its restricted geography, but it’s hard not to think if the current technology stock falls on the US stock markets became a Tech Wreck style bust then the city’s problems might solve themselves.

The challenge for all major cities around the world is to manage the current boom in property prices that threaten to drive out lower paid workers essential to vibrant economies – although ultimately anything that can’t be sustained won’t be sustained and it’s hard to see how housing can run too far ahead of wages before a reversal happens.

In the meantime though we can expect to see many cities struggle with the same issues that face San Francisco.

An expensive place to do business

The cost of doing business in different countries is illustrated by one infographic

Job search site Staff.com has an infographic showing the cost of setting up a startup business in selected cities around the world.

Staff.com founder Rob Dawson looked at the cost of hiring two developers and one designer and paying rent on an office in eight cities around the world.

Of the six Zurich came in the most expensive followed by Sydney, New York, San Francisco, London and Paris. Manila and Mumbai were obviously the cheapest.

Staff.com – Connecting Great Companies with Global Talent

While the wages are the headline in this admittedly unscientific survey, the rents are a factor worth examining. If we arrange those cities by rents, then London jumps to the highest spot while Sydney remains second.

Cost of renting in each city

London	63,984
Sydney	47,616
New York	45,600
Paris	38,400
Zurich	36,000
Mumbai	29,184
San Francisco	22,080
Manila	9,984

This table illustrates a number of things; that Mumbai is a very uncompetitive location by Indian standards, being an app developer with a London startup is a miserable existence and that Australia is a very expensive place to do business.

Last week at The Hub Sydney discussing the global workforce with O-Desk’s Matt Cooper, expatriate Aussie and founder of The Fetch Kate Kendall emphasised the high cost of doing business in Australia.

“You don’t realise how expensive Australia has become until you get off the plane,” said Kate who pointed out the burden of massive mortgages mean labour rates have to be high so people can afford to meet their bank repayments.

I’ve argued in the past that those high property prices are a form of economic cholesterol that sap Australia’s economic strength and these discussion illustrate that point.

The bizarre thing is that Australian property prices are expected to go higher and, most worrying of all, the consensus among mainstream economists and business writers is that current levels are not overpriced at all.

If we accept that the current high property prices are the long term normal for Australia, then the Aussie economy has a major adjustment to make.

The problem for any industry that is internationally exposed, which is almost the entire service economy, is that Australian producers are hopelessly uncompetitive at current wage and cost levels.

For startups the question is what value are they actually getting from being based in Australia and that is a question being asked by many businesses.

Those deciding to stay in Australia are going to have to figure out how they can deliver high quality value from a cost base equal to Switzerland’s.

At present most Aussie businesses are not prepared to deal with the problem and it’s a question that’s going to be faced by the nation’s workers, retirees and governments.

Kinkabool – the highrise past and future

A visit to the Gold Coast’s oldest high rise raises some questions about sustainability.

Today high rise buildings are the norm on Queensland’s Gold Coast, but just over fifty years ago in Surfers Paradise, nine storey Kinkabool was the first of the breed to be built. Its condition today is a warning on how skyscrapers can turn into expensive liabilities for owners.

ABC Open has an interview with one of the workers on the building and in the accompanying video Bob Nancarrow shows just how Kinkabool dominated the then sleepy seaside resort of Surfers Paradise in 1960.

A visit to Kinkabool today reveals a building struggling in the face of poor maintenance and an undercapitalised ownership. Luckily for the owners’ corporation, the Queensland government pitched in to repair the roof but much of the rest of the complex is showing its age.

The rabbit warren lobby with its orange tiles indicate some of the building was upgraded in the 1970s but apart from a lick of paint, it hasn’t seen much love since.

The lift is are where the building’s age and owners’ lack of investment really shows. An old, slow elevator that hasn’t been upgraded since the first residents moved in clunks its way up the building. Even Hong Kong’s Chunking Mansions – the world’s best example of a dysfunctional high rise – gets its lifts upgraded sometime.

Inside the lift, it’s a depressing scene and one wonders if the antiquated equipment would meet today’s building standards. Even if it does meet the regulations, the dispiriting ride on its own would knock a big chunk off the asking prices for buyers or renters.

Stepping out of the lift, the view in the stairwell isn’t much better. The lack of maintenance or investment begins to show in old fittings, damaged glass and hints of painted over graffiti.

While standing on the ninth floor, music from unit 1B drifts through the building – it’s lucky the occupant has a taste in cheesy 1970s music as some thumping headbanger music could to serious damage to the building along with the residents’ sanity.

One wonders just how noisy the building would be with a party happening or a young, crying baby although it seems families aren’t really interested in these apartments or the central Surfers Paradise location.

Though a very undistinguished building, it does have one touching little architectural feature in the different tile patterns on each floor, although probably not enough to redeem it in the eyes of most people.

Probably the saddest thing about Kinkabool is how a building that once dwarfed everything in the region is now overshadowed by its much bigger neighbours.

Across the road, and blocking out most of Kinkabool’s sunlight, is the 1980s Paradise Centre.

Time isn’t proving any kinder towards the Paradise Centre with the lack of maintenance beginning to show on the thirty-year old complex as this vent across the street from Kinkabool illustrates.

Generally, if the landlord or owners’ corporation is too stingy to afford a coat of paint, then you can be sure there are more nasty surprises

Both the Paradise Centre’s and Kinkabool’s declines illustrate a much more fundamental problem in an economy driven by property speculation and taxation allowances — there isn’t a lot of money to go around for maintaining older buildings.

While Kinkabool’s residents can get by with a clapped out lift, inhabitants of larger and more modern complexes like the Paradise Centre will find the costs of running and maintaining their buildings an increasingly difficult burden.

It could just turn out that Kinkabool, should it escape the wrecker’s ball, may well turn out the more desirable dwelling than its bigger, more modern neighbours.

For the meantime though, Kinkabool marks the beginning of a far more sophisticated era in Australian and Gold Coast history. Whether that era became too sophisticated for itself remains to be seen.

Ordos and Detroit – A tale of two cities and two economies

The problems of Detroit and Ordos tell us much about the differences between the US and Chinese economies

This week bought news that that two cities, one in China and one in the US, had fallen into deep financial trouble.

While the bankruptcy of Detroit is very different to the developers of the Ordos new city failing, there is a strange symmetry between the two stories.

Detroit is the biggest US city ever to enter bankruptcy with an estimated $20 billion in debts, dwarfing the previous record of Alabama’s Jefferson Country’s $4 billion default in 2011.

The fall of Detroit wasn’t unexpected as the New York Times tells.

Detroit expanded at a stunning rate in the first half of the 20th century with the arrival of the automobile industry, and then shrank away in recent decades at a similarly remarkable pace. A city of 1.8 million in 1950, it is now home to 700,000 people, as well as to tens of thousands of abandoned buildings, vacant lots and unlit streets.

Like most industrial hubs, Detroit grew became the centre of the US motor industry due to geographic and commercial advantages along with a few historical accidents but as the economy changed, the city’s importance faded.

It’s sad for the people of Detroit but it isn’t the first industrial hub to fade away; Ironbridge, once the cradle of the English industrial revolution, is today an open air museum and a charming rural spot.

Ordos on the other hand is an example of 21st Century government planning with the Inner Mongolian provincial leaders building the city of the basis of build it and they will come.

They haven’t.

The collapse of Ordos is going to be an interesting test of the Chinese economic model. Many of the country’s local and provincial governments – like Australia’s – have become dependent on the revenues from property sales. Now the market is drying up, local councils are having trouble paying their bills as Bloomberg reports.

Some Ordos district governments had to borrow money from companies to pay municipal employees’ salaries, Economy & Nation Weekly, published by the official Xinhua News Agency, said in a July 5 report on its website.

So while Detroit illustrates the stresses in the US system, so too does Ordos tell us about the problems facing Chinese governments.

The tale of these two cities also shows the difference between the US’ industrialisation of the early Twentieth Century and today’s economic development in the PRC and reminds why the results of ‘Capitalism With Chinese Characteristics’ may be very different to the modern American consumerist economy.

For Detroit, at least there’s good news as one US city manages to works its way out of bankruptcy. For the developers of Ordos though, things must be looking very grim.

Ordos image courtesy of Bert van Dijk through Flickr.

Australia’s small business crisis

A survey on Australian family owned businesses raises some disturbing questions about the nation’s economy.

The 2013 MGI Australian Family and Private Business Survey is a disturbing document describing a sector that’s aging, pessimistic and struggling with change. It bodes poorly for what should be the powerhouse of the nation’s economy.

Having been conducted over nineteen years, the MGI survey is a very good snapshot of how the sector has evolved over the last two decades and it’s notable how owners are older and not optimistic about their prospects of selling their businesses.

Another key aspect is the changed focus of Australian family businesses; in 2003 forty percent were in manufacturing, this year its half that which probably tracks the decline of the nation’s manufacturing industries.

Most striking though is the aging of the small business community with one in three proprietors being in the 60 to 69 year old bracket, up from one in five just 3 years ago.

That the average age of Australian small business owners is increasing shouldn’t be surprising given the nation’s increasing obsession with property. As home prices become more expensive, it becomes more difficult for younger people to pay off their mortgages or risk their equity on building a business.

Probably the most heart breaking comment from the report is that over half of Australia’s small business owners don’t see an immediate prospect of retiring and nearly two thirds don’t see any chance of an early exit.

58% of family business owner-managers see themselves working in the business beyond 65 years of age, with 65% indicating that their businesses are NOT exit or succession ready.

Part of the reason most Australian family businesses aren’t succession ready is that Generation X and Y buyers crippled by big mortgages simply can’t afford to pay what the older Baby Boomer and Lucky Generation proprietors need to retire upon.

It’s hard not to think that the grand 1980s corporatist vision of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating – that most Australians will work for one of two big corporations while being members of one of two big trade unions – has largely come true.

For Australia though this is not a good thing as the wealth of those corporations, along with that of the nation’s households, is largely tied into the domestic property market.

A discussion on the Macrobusiness website about New Zealand’s property obsession has a graph which illustrates both the Kiwi and Australian economies’ dependence upon house prices.

Those financial assets in the second graph include the value of businesses, and that statistic staying largely flat while housing wealth has gone up fifty percent over the last fifteen years illustrates how dependent the Aussie economy has become upon property speculation.

Property speculation can be fun, particularly when you’re watching people bash down walls on the latest reality TV home improvement show, but it isn’t the basis for a strong economy.

That Australia’s small business sector is aging and increasingly shifting to low value adding service industries is something that should be discussed more as the nation considers what its global role will be in the 21st Century.

Australia welcomes the multi generational mortgage

Australia starts to repeat Japan’s experience with multi generational mortgages. With a twist that might be more debilitating than the Japanese lost decades.

At the height of the Japanese property boom in the 1980s, the hundred year mortgage came into being.

Pushing payments onto children and grand-children was the only way home prices could continue to rise once they hit levels which the average Japanese worker could ever afford with a more traditional twenty or thirty year mortgage.

Twenty five years later Australia finds itself in a similar position as parents guarantee their childrens’ mortgages.

Repeating the Japanese mistake

While the Japanese looked to sticking their mortgages onto their kids and grandkids, Down Under the kids are fighting back and getting mum and dad to underwrite their unaffordable loans.

This weekend’s Sydney Morning Herald features in its property section the story of how Sharon and Graeme Bruce guaranteed their son’s and his fiance’s mortgage in Sydney’s inner suburbs.

While the story isn’t clear on the size of the deposit (which isn’t surprising given the SMH’s shoddy editing), it appears the Bruces’ have guaranteed around $300,000 so his son and future daughter-in-law can grab a five bedroom, 1.45 million dollar mansion.

One wonders what great businesses Matt and Hannah could build if mum and dad were prepared to stump up a similar amount to invest in a start up?

Australia’s property obsession

Sadly we’ll never know – in Australia, the smart money gets a job, pays off a mortgage and accumulates wealth through investment properties. What cows are to African tribesmen, negatively geared units are to the Australian middle class.

The hundred year strategy hasn’t worked too well for Japan, with a declining population those mortgages entered into a boom level 1980s values now don’t look so attractive and are one large reason for the nation’s lost decades.

In Australia, things aren’t likely to work so well either. The Baby Boomers and Lucky Generationals – those born from 1930 to 1945 – guaranteeing their kids’ and grandkids’ mortgages are relying on ever increasing property prices.

This is understandable given that few of them have any experience of long term stagnation, let alone decline, of property values but it leaves them incredibly exposed should the Aussie housing market slump.

Can an Aussie property decline happen?

Many Australians, particularly those with vested interests, maintain such a decline can’t happen but the prospects aren’t good as the SMH story shows;

The couple had attempted to buy a small terrace in Newtown but kept getting pipped at the post by other young professional couples. At a higher price point they had no competition.

Despite his parents’ generosity he said he would still need to rent out a few of the rooms to help pay for the mortgage.

So Matt can’t afford the mortgage. That’s not good starting point and one that could cost his parents dearly, which they don’t seem to care about much.

”Obviously my dad guaranteeing the loan was the only way we were going to purchase this,” Mr Bruce said. ”You need to have a 20 per cent deposit otherwise the banks want you to pay insurance … it’s a bit of a rort really.”

It’s fair to call mortgage insurance a rort – as it certainly is – but its purpose is to protect the banks should a mortgagee default and the financiers find themselves out of pocket.

With Matt’s parents getting him out of paying that insurance his bank has much better default protection, equity in his parents’ property.

Guaranteeing risk and misery

I’m not privy to the finances of Sharon and Bruce, but most of their contemporaries can ill afford to lose several hundred thousand dollars in home equity in their later years.

That is where Australia’s multi-generational mortgages could turn very nasty, very quickly as older Australians find themselves having to deliver on the guarantees they gave on behalf of their over committed offspring.

In Japan, it’s taken a long time for the population to realise their national wealth has been squandered on twenty years of propping up unsustainable property prices and economic policies.

One wonders how long it will takes Australians to realise the same has happened to them and what the political reaction will be.

Desperate Ken and market realities

Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market is giving some people a nasty slap over the head.

Ken Slamet has a problem, his in-laws are trying to sell the family house and no-one will give them the price they want.

The house at 228 Warrimoo Ave has been on the market through an agent for more than 100 days, pulling in ridiculously low offers, Mr Slamet said.

Depending on the deposit, Mr Slamet is seeking between $1.5 million and $1.6 million for the house his wife grew up in.

One would argue that those “ridiculously low offers” are actually Mr Market giving Ken and his in-laws a slap of reality. They are simply asking for too much money.

St Ives, a suburb on Sydney’s Upper North Shore, is going through demographic change. In 1960s and 70s St Ives was the suburb for successful stock brokers and bankers, however in the 1980s and 90s that demographic decided they wanted to live closer to the city and Harbour and suburbs like Mosman and Clontarf became their areas of choice.

For Ken’s in-laws and their neighbours, this is bad news as few other people can afford 1970s mansions on large blocks within 30km of Sydney. Those who do manage to sell often find the buyers are developers who sub-divide to build townhouses or apartment blocks, madness in a congested, car-dependent suburb with poor public transport links.

Adam Smith’s invisible hand of the market is giving those holding properties that were attractive to stockbrokers in 1972 a nasty slap over the head in 2012.

Ken though has a solution for his problem – he’s offering a rent to buy scheme at a mere snip of $2297 per week. An amount 70% higher than the average Sydneysider’s gross income and a whopping four and half times the city’s average rent of $500.

Good luck with that.

The real problem is that Ken’s in-laws are stuck with expectations higher than the market reality. Like many of us in the Western world, they believe their assets are worth more than they really are.

As the global economy deleverages there will be many more people like Ken’s family. For many the transition to a less wealthy lifestyle is going to be tough.

Tag: property