Sydney's pay-later poor

Sydney's pay-later poor The Sunday Telegraph

DEBT-stricken families with new homes, cars and plasma televisions in Sydney's sprawling housing estates are relying on charity handouts to buy food.
Welfare agencies report a worrying increase in the number of middle-income families with big mortgages seeking help to pay grocery, electricity and gas bills.

Dubbed the 'pay-later poor'' by St Vincent de Paul, they live in homes boasting cable television and the latest electrical goods and use credit cards to meet basic living costs.

Many of the families live in so-called McMansions.

Rising interest rates and petrol prices have hit them hard, with the latest figures showing soaring personal debt levels and bankruptcies.

How the housing bust went west - Opinion - smh.com.au

Looks like the spruikers' stories caught the slower Westies out. When interest rates went to an all-time low, shrewd investors in the eastern and northern suburbs probably saw a price boom coming, and bought early, possibly to sell at the top. Once the seminar gurus got up steam and convinced the Westies to negative gear, because 'it always goes up', it was too late -- the tulip boom was busting.

Does the NSW 'Labor' government care about any of this? No way, they're too busy bailing themselves out of their countless screw-ups and aiding and abetting their capitalist cronies, many of whom are in property development themselves...

How the housing bust went west