Building Contractors are Missing a Great Opportunity

Building contractors today are missing a great opportunity because they are not thinking laterally. People will always need homes. The problem in Australia though is that the homes have been built to ‘mansion’ standards’ rather than a comfortable home standard. Due to this fact, last month building approvals were down again. The approval request for new homes fell by 7% in March 2012.

When so many people want to buy their own homes but don’t want to be stuck for the next 20+ years with a quarter million dollar plus debt to be repaid, many have now chosen to rent rather than buy. This makes excellent sense in today’s uncertain world. 

There are already far too many home owners in Australia who are now stuck with a “Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac” type deal where they owe the banks and other financial institutions more than their homes are worth.  Frankly, this is a disgusting and grossly unfair state of personal financing that Australia managed to avoid during the Global Financial Crises (GFC) of 2008.  So where have we since gone so wrong?

Builders need to build homes for people and not the Banks

Bank shareholders have been led to expect a very, very high return on their shares. In short, our Australian banks have become so greedy now that the Australian Government is there to protect their depositors that they are snubbing their noses at their customers knowing full well they have blanket coverage by the Government. This is unconscionable behaviour. 

The outcome for this wrong-doing to be rectified seems a long way off yet but people still need a home to live in and Builders need to work.  And as the old saying goes “there is more than one way to skin a cat” and so there is more than one way to get financing for people who want to take out a ‘fair’ sized loan repayment plan to buy a ‘fair’ built home. 

Build homes for people and Families

If you were to offer someone the choice of a mansion or a cottage, which would you expect them to prefer? Now if you make that offer to people and offer them a choice of a place to live costing $200,000 that they can see themselves paying off in ten years or the mansion at half a million they can never see themselves owning fully, what would you expect them to prefer?

People have to live a lifestyle too and if the only lifestyle choice is restricted through lack of money due to a high mortgage repayment, most people will reject the idea. But if they were offered a comfortable home, a lower mortgage and a lifestyle that they could afford to have with a bit of disposable cash with which to do something they liked to do, therein lies the missing opportunity for the savvy building contractor today