Three points that need to be analysed
- Sydney house price trends – Sydney house prices have fallen more than 10%, one of the highest in Australia, in the past 2 years. And there are various indicators that the price is on the upside
- Interest rates – For buying a house in Sydney, interest rates is a big factor as it determines your service capacity and indicates the overall cost of acquiring an asset. Interest rates are now all time low.
- Employment – Data suggest the unemployment is steady.
The three indicators suggest that we will see an uptrend in house prices and you would definitely want to ride the wave when it is an uptrend. I believe it is a good time to invest, at least think about it – it’s just my suggestion.
If you ask me to name two things that have really made significant changes in how we live our life, my answer would be –
- The day human beings realised that they could use somebody else to do their work, and
- The day humans started to settle down in one place.
We started to settle down
I will discuss the second point first, prior to settling down, humans would move around and temporarily live in a place where there was abundance of food and water, and they would find shelter near the source of food. As long as the two conditions were met they stayed there and as resources got exhausted they moved on to another site. The good thing about it,humans were closer to nature and would know the repercussion if they harmedit in any shape or form. Slowly we started to settle down, we created our houses in a place first and then started to grow food around where we lived. Water was the key ingredient for growing food, which is why you will see all major civilisation started along the river banks. Over the period of time we invented / designed products to build houses that were stronger, safer and insulated from the environment extremes.
We invented air-conditioner and heater that would keep us cool in summer and warm in winter. As it happened, whether we realised or not, comfort slowly crept into our lives. So we created things to give us comfort and slowly transformed into comfort creatures.We started ignoring our environment and our lives became more artificial. For eg. We started to look for alternates to cotton for making fabric as making fabric using cotton is very long and manual, so we invented nylon, an artificial alternative to cotton. In addition, nylon had uses in many other engineering. Plastic was a great invention in the 60s – 80s and if you fast forward to the 21st century, we are now struggling to protect our planet from the menace of plastic. What a contradiction!
Using somebody else to do our work
Now coming to the first point, when humans realised that they could use somebody else to do their work – we first made animals and other humans(weaker than us) to do our work. As time progressed, we became so dependent on them that we found out new ways and means to keep them with us, so that we could have them forever. That gave birth to the concept of slavery. We used them for small things such as cooking and cleaning and also bigger and harder things such as working in the farm and transportation using human / animal driven carts.Instead of walking long distance, we could actually be carried by 4 people on their shoulders or travel in a cart driven by horses and bullocks.
Over a period of time, we realised that humans and animals had limited ability, so we invented machines. For eg. Carts drawn by horses or humans could only go up to certain maximum speed. We invented cars to travel faster on road. For travelling longer distances we wanted to fly like birds so we invented aeroplanes. So now we also started using machines to do the work for us.
The biggest revolution in our lives came when we bundled together these two things ie. The concept of using somebody else or something else to do our work and comfort/ convenience.
I remember in the early 1960s, having a telephone was a luxury and so was refrigerator and television in 70s. Mobile phone was unheard of as late as 1980s. Fast forward to 2019, tables have turned, we have now become slaves to technology and machines. Have you ever imagined life without a mobile phone or television? Before the advent of mobile phone, we had land lines, which meant if we wanted to talk to somebody who is not with you, you had to look for a telephone machine and today, we walk with the phone in our pocket and we are accessible 24 hours.
Before internet became popular, we got our daily news delivered to us in the form of a newspaper and now we have full access to news over the internet on our mobile phones. Have you realised that as we embrace more technology, the more dependent we get on it? I understand, we are doing research on cars that can drive itself, wouldn’t that be a revolution in itself.
A new type of slavery have creeped into our lives whether we like it or not. We have all become a slave and we have one common master – technology and gadgets.
As the society has grown our brains have created and invented more things and as a natural process, have started solving more complex problems. Do our brains have any limits to creativity or problem solving ability? Are we going to stop any time soon? Where will all these technology going to take us? I reserve my comments and leave it to my reader to decide and tell me what they think.
I will surely give my opinion on what I think – Coming soon.
Partha Mazumdar is the founder and designer of https://www.verticalbricks.com.au/ an online property platform. He has interest in changing market behavior and economics.
With the interest rates at its lowest in the
past decade, the house prices have stabilized a bit but are forecasted to keep
growing. Whenever, house prices spur, increase is always highest in the inner
suburbs. This is mainly because of limited land and high demand. Buying
a house in Melbourne is more affordable in the outer suburbs as new
suburbs are being built and infrastructure improved. Follow our site https://www.verticalbricks.com.au/buying-house-in-australia
As a young boy I used to accompany my dad for day to day vegetable and groceries shopping, to local market, “bazaar” in the area. We lived in a suburb in Kolkata, India. The market comprised of small shops where you would get all your daily needs starting from fruits and vegetable, meat, fish to clothes and all others such as soaps and detergents and shoes. The market would start operating very early around 6am in the morning and most of the shops selling vegetable and meat would close by around 12 noon and the others would stay open till late afternoon.
The local market consisted of small merchants and many were producers themselves. All the vegetable farmers would get up early in the morning and pick up all vegetables from their farm, pack them in a basket, catch a train, travel an hour or two and reach the market. Once all their produce were sold they went back home and would repeat it the next day. There was no facility for refrigeration and packaging and the concept of genetic modification or pressure to increase productivity was unheard of. The only merchants who were not producers themselves were products that needed manufacturing such as soaps, cooking oils, clothing etc.
The good thing about it was, there was no middle man, no chemicals, fresh produce and competitive pricing. Probably the most efficient marketplace that one can think today. Probably the only drawback was that there was a bit of wastage and there was no place to store things in case it wasn’t sold on that day.
Emergence of the middle man, stockists
As time passed, concepts of productivity, efficiency and reduce wastage gave rise to packaging, refrigeration and mass procurement. Large corporations, private and government, who had financial muscle, stepped in and set up large networks for procurement's and storage. That is when the concept of middle men started. Then it formed a clear distinction between primary fruit and vegetable growers /producers, food processors and sellers. The primary producers were no longer the sellers.
It was good for the producers as they didn’t have to worry about traveling / selling and could focus on production only. The procurers would buy all goods from the producers, stock it and distribute / sell them at a margin. Over a period of time the producers lost touch of the markets and buyers and the stockists and sellers became powerful and started controlling the market. Their buying power enabled them to control the market and the procurement price too.
As the market shifted from producer / buyer to distribution model, the end customer got further away from producers and eventually were not too keen to know who were producing and the quality of these products.
The question remained – is it the market model we always wanted?
Realization and after effects
As we get more socially aware of the effects of over commercialization and chemicals added in our food products, we have started asking questions such as, Are packaged / processed food good for our health? Should we be consuming more fresh produce? Who is this vegetable producer? What chemicals were used for producing this food product?
All these questions were directed to the middle men and they had no clue.
This gave rise to the “organic” movement and we wanted to know who the producers were. We want to know what chemicals were used, we want to know if the produce was genetically modified or simply know who the food farmer was who produced your vegetables and meat.Are we going back to where we started?
As the movement grew in size, a large percentage of the market wanted to buy local and know who the producers were. Many commercial organisations and co-operatives identified this as an opportunity and have come up with the concept of joining producers with end consumers. With the evolution of online market places for fresh produce, the age old concept of “bazaar” or a “souk” is getting a great boost.
As a new trend, to gain the confidence of consumers, large supermarket chains have featured farmers and producers to be part of their advertising campaigns. The movement is catching on. In my opinion, it will be a bit of challenge to move back in time, however, there is enough sign to suggest that we are definitely adapting those concepts. The role of middle men is getting narrower and lesser of importance.
Partha Mazumdar is the founder and designer of https://www.verticalbricks.com.au an online property platform. He has interest in changing market behavior and economics.
Once
you register your details and your requirements of the house you are looking
for, you will be connected with potential properties. Buying house in Australia is much
easier with https://www.verticalbricks.com.au.
If you choose, you may also be connected with professional, who will make
property buying an easy experience.
Once
you register your details and your requirements of the house you are looking
for, you will be connected with potential properties. Buyinghouse in Sydney is much easier with https://www.verticalbricks.com.au. If you
choose, you may also be connected with professional, who will make property
buying an easy experience.
