Survey highlights housing fears

MOST people who do not own a home are concerned they will be unable to get into the market, according to new research.

Prices have recovered in recent months but are still down 5.2 per cent nationally over the past year, making housing appear more affordable.

Despite this, 83 per cent of 2200 people who do not own a home, when surveyed by property research group CoreLogic, said they were concerned they would be unable to make their first move into the market, and saving and lending restraints along with property taxes were proving the biggest barriers.

CoreLogic head of research Tim Lawless said the trend was a concern as volatile prices meant affordability was likely to have already peaked.

“The attitudes towards affordability have improved, simply because housing values have fallen, not by any sort of policy change or by any real remediation being introduced to address the issue from a longer term perspective,” he said. “The fact that we’re now starting to see values rising once again is already starting to reverse the fact that affordability has improved.”

Seventy-nine per cent of survey respondents believed the best way to improve housing affordability was to remove stamp duty, CoreLogic found. UBER is cramming more services into its ride-hailing application as it explores ways to generate more revenue and finally turn a profit.

It is force-feeding its food delivery service, “Eats”, into the Uber app that millions of people use to summon rides.

That means Uber users who don’t already have the “Eats” app may now be asked whether they want to order some food in the ride-hailing app.

The US company also will start making other changes to the ride-hailing platform as part of its effort to create an “operating system for life”, according to company chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi.

“This is a big change for us, but we, as a company, have never been afraid of big changes,” he said.

Uber is under intensifying pressure to start making money.