I actually love em, cause some of the dwellings are like freaking amazing and for the price (compared to our ridiculous housing market), but some are a good laugh - like those penthouse units in Florida that have a free-standing toilet right in the middle of a walkway between two rooms. LOL... and the shower is in another room... ok.. maybe that could work to avoid showering whilst someone is polluting the local climate. LOL... and I love those houses next to the lakes in Michigan. Some are so close to shore, you might as well put a boat underneath them! 
I bet the Americans laugh at our house shows too.
I get jealous of the options people over there have. They can live near the snow and the sea, and still get a good job. I guess a huge population helps.
Yeah, the prices are more reasonable, which makes you cry when you consider how expensive ours is.
One of the main reasons for 'cheaper' house prices is the recession we missed out on and the banks forclosed on so many then sold them off cheap before the bank itself went belly up.
May seem strange but Id prefer the higher prices than the way America went down the gurgler
Select to expand quoteTonz said..
One of the main reasons for 'cheaper' house prices is the recession we missed out on and the banks forclosed on so many then sold them off cheap before the bank itself went belly up.
May seem strange but Id prefer the higher prices than the way America went down the gurgler
Yeah but that was like 5 years ago. Now, things are way better there. And for the prices you get a penthouse compared to an inner shack in the city here.
Select to expand quoteTonz said..
One of the main reasons for 'cheaper' house prices is the recession we missed out on and the banks forclosed on so many then sold them off cheap before the bank itself went belly up.
May seem strange but Id prefer the higher prices than the way America went down the gurgler
It wont take much change in the interest rate for our housing market to go down the gurgler like the USA.
Select to expand quoteTonz said..
One of the main reasons for 'cheaper' house prices is the recession we missed out on and the banks forclosed on so many then sold them off cheap before the bank itself went belly up.
May seem strange but Id prefer the higher prices than the way America went down the gurgler
Yeah I agree, but the 'being able to windsurf and ski in the same day' has got me. I would love that. If it weren't for the gun culture, I wouldn't half mind moving to the US. Its not that hard apparently, but we have it pretty good here, even if we do have to drive 6 hours to the snow.
I have a school friend that moved to the US and works in a good job in a relatively small city and seems to have a great lifestyle. I think having a huge amount of usable land and population makes that population. Having a huge number of states also means that each state has a capital where there are banking industries, government, and all sorts of other jobs that draw people there. Here, we seem to have just lumped everything into our small number of state capitals.
Maybe the answer is to divide the states up into territories and have individual capitals spread all over the place?
Houses are cheaper in the US party because the cost of building is far far cheaper.
We get royally ripped off on all building materials and products
Select to expand quoteBuster fin said..
^^^and bureaucrats all over the place paid for by the working few? Yeah, nah.
Despite what the government of the day argues, you actually need them. Cut a lot of them and you suddenly find services are slow. They may not appear as the most efficient, but someone has to do the job. Compare this against the private sector outsourcing where the same job is done but profit needs to be created as well.
'Cutting government services' often mean police and nurses when politicians have their way.
Where you have government stable jobs you attract other jobs to support those people, and then more people to support them. Its the way it works.
Select to expand quoteFormulaNova said..Buster fin said..
^^^and bureaucrats all over the place paid for by the working few? Yeah, nah.
Despite what the government of the day argues, you actually need them. Cut a lot of them and you suddenly find services are slow. They may not appear as the most efficient, but someone has to do the job. Compare this against the private sector outsourcing where the same job is done but profit needs to be created as well.
'Cutting government services' often mean police and nurses when politicians have their way.
Where you have government stable jobs you attract other jobs to support those people, and then more people to support them. Its the way it works.
Bullsh1t. The only reason we have these shiny bums sucking on the tit of the public purse is to administer to exponentially growing rules, policies and regulations these pseudo socialist governments are producing.
We could easily cut out 80 percent of the government if the self serving regulatory policies which only stifle healthy competition are erradictaed. And a land tax but most of you wouldn't understand why and I can't be bothered to explain.
The beauty of the American housing market is if it goes belly up, you can just leave the keys in the door and walk away. Debt gone. Here, if the price falls below what it's worth you are up **** creek without a paddle. Lose the house and then incur a debt to pay back once the bank has sold your house and sold it for less.
The next stock market crash crash led by a decline in land values, jacked up by easy credit, created out of thin air with no real asset backing will hurt Australia. Not sure there will be another Chinese boom to save us and hopefully not another wasteful government to have money to chuck around and waste it all. We've just kicked the can down the road and created even more systematic vulnerability in our housing and financial markets.
Select to expand quoteFormulaNova said..
Yeah I agree, but the 'being able to windsurf and ski in the same day' has got me. I would love that. If it weren't for the gun culture, I wouldn't half mind moving to the US.
Vancouver, Canada. You can even drive to the US from there to take advantage of their depressed economy for shopping, without having to live there.
Select to expand quoteFormulaNova said..
Maybe the answer is to divide the states up into territories and have individual capitals spread all over the place?
Totally agree. Queensland needs to be split and have Townsville as it's northern capital. I would call the new state Northernland. hehe
Select to expand quoteeppo said..FormulaNova said..Buster fin said..
^^^and bureaucrats all over the place paid for by the working few? Yeah, nah.
Despite what the government of the day argues, you actually need them. Cut a lot of them and you suddenly find services are slow. They may not appear as the most efficient, but someone has to do the job. Compare this against the private sector outsourcing where the same job is done but profit needs to be created as well.
'Cutting government services' often mean police and nurses when politicians have their way.
Where you have government stable jobs you attract other jobs to support those people, and then more people to support them. Its the way it works.
Bullsh1t. The only reason we have these shiny bums sucking on the tit of the public purse is to administer to exponentially growing rules, policies and regulations these pseudo socialist governments are producing.
We could easily cut out 80 percent of the government if the self serving regulatory policies which only stifle healthy competition are erradictaed. And a land tax but most of you wouldn't understand why and I can't be bothered to explain.
.
Yeah, sure, we could cut out regulations if everyone actually obeyed them. Unfortunately they don't.
I read recently that the AusPost drama of not revealing the $5M salary for the CEO was part of the 'red tape reform'. Its just marketing buzzwords to win an election.
You read these stories about big companies underpaying their employees, of franchise parents companies ripping off their franchisees, of a backpacker having their ear torn off because the cheap-arse employee wanted them to clean the machine without having to shut it down.
On the face of it, there seem to be a lot of rules that exist for a reason, but in reality, they are probably needed for the slackers amongst society.
I hope you guys are taking in consideration the exchange rate between your dollar and the USD, they are far from equal, which makes your housing seem a lot more expensive than that of the U.S. I consider the U.S. housing market incredibly expensive.
However, if you live in southern California, and it's wintertime, you can go surfing in the morning, jump in the car, drive up to the mountains in time to get a half day chair lift pass to go skiing in the afternoon, so there is that. But how many people do that? Almost none.
The United States is a huge and diverse Nation. There are cheap and expensive places to live. Because of what some people do for work they are forced to live in expensive places but they make a lot of money so it's all relative. Much of our country is covered in snow all winter but if you are retired and can escape South for a month or two these are actually great places to live the rest of the year, a bit of snow is fine but there are limits to what is tolerable.
Then there is property tax which differs in every County. I live in Hawaii where housing is very expensive yet property taxes for full time residents are the lowest in the Nation. I want to move to Hood River Oregon where a comparable house will cost 1/2 to 2/3 the price yet I will be paying 4X the property tax.
Here in an interactive property tax map. money.cnn.com/interactive/real-estate/property-tax/
Hey Beagle / Bender,
What would the average-ish household expenses be for you fellas?
not food, but stuff like electrickery, natural gas/propane, water, landline telephone, mobile [cell] phone and internet access etc.
sn, the six things that you listed costs me about $250 USD/month.
Water and sewer are combined into one, plus need to add about $35/month for weekly trash pickup.
$285 USD total.
Property taxes and insurance not included.
Princeville Kauai, electricity for one person with heat pump water heater $100. Propane I only use for clothes dryer maybe $10. Propane is expensive, natural gas is 1/3 the price but not available on Hawaii. Sewer/water $70. Internet $40. Cell phone with data plan $60. Landline $20. Trash pickup $15. Private community road maintenance and security patrol, community center etc.. $60
Big expense here is electricity especially if you have an electric water heater you can easily pay $300 for a small family but if you have a solar water heater it might only be $150, we have the most expensive electricity in the nation.
Hey Beagle, why not just put in a Nuclear Power plant to whip up some cheap electricity. Paint the ****er green and call it clean energy, no-one will suspect a thing. Couldn't be any worst that the volcanos you have percolating in the background all the time. (Or maybe a Geothermal power ststion)
I'm all for it but it would never fly here, we can't even get CNG, they prefer to run the power plant on naphtha. There are several large solar power plants and some sort of bio generating plant where they burn wood for electricity. The problem is being a small island we are not connected to the "grid". Electricity is about 4X the average mainland price but on the other hand you don't need air conditioning or heating here.
In Norway they burn rubbish for energy
without the wherewithal to understand that their rubbish is what is consuming all the energy
without energy, no rubbish, no energy
same same for renewables
Without energy from coal and oil, no renewables, no energy
f*cking windmills, batteries and solar only last 15-20 years before their potential to create energy is gone, might as well have just burnt the coal, would've saved a few lithium mines polluting third countries
google flamingos elton musk to see how green you can paint a poo
Select to expand quoteRails said..
In Norway they burn rubbish for energy
without the wherewithal to understand that their rubbish is what is consuming all the energy
without energy, no rubbish, no energy
same same for renewables
Without energy from coal and oil, no renewables, no energy
f*cking windmills, batteries and solar only last 15-20 years before their potential to create energy is gone, might as well have just burnt the coal, would've saved a few lithium mines polluting third countries
google flamingos elton musk to see how green you can paint a poo
Ps. Guess how many of those "green" lithium mines are run off of batteries, wind and solar
either laugh or cry at the absurdism of trying to grow more and more with less in order to surmount the problem that more and more wasteful growth creates less (in a finite system)
#entropy - 2nd law
the potential of an object to do the same task twice reduces to zero once it has done the task the first time
pps. American house hunter shows is about all I watch on the Tele 
Select to expand quoteBeaglebuddy said..
I'm all for it but it would never fly here, we can't even get CNG, they prefer to run the power plant on naphtha. There are several large solar power plants and some sort of bio generating plant where they burn wood for electricity. The problem is being a small island we are not connected to the "grid". Electricity is about 4X the average mainland price but on the other hand you don't need air conditioning or heating here.
And yet the islands are full of windmills these days, kinda makes you think WTF?
Hawaii, one of the states that is trying to out-liberal my state of Cali. which is trying to shut down all the nukes, our dams are weak, our roads suck, especially after all the rains we've been getting. But never fear, we're building a high speed rail system that we can't afford and that nobody wants. Once again, here as well, WTF?
This is what should be built everywhere, www.explainthatstuff.com/plasma-arc-recycling.html Plasma arc incinerators make no pollution and generate electricity. They can feed everything into it, cars, hazardous waste, recyclable material, people, whatever. More efficient to put all garbage and recyclables into one trash bin on the curb, one truck picks it up, no sorting just incinerate everything.
