It's another beautiful Saturday morning in Sydney, and I'm about to waste it all by shopping for real estate. I've always hated almost everything about buying and selling houses, but it's far worse now as everything is so bloody expensive. At the moment, an averagely nice house in an averagely nice suburb will set you back around a million bucks (AUD or USD, the only difference between the two currencies is the direction they are moving). This means the only people who can actually afford to buy houses are people lucky enough to have bought before the boom, and stockbrokers. The rest of us tend to buy houses anyway and end up with crippling mortgages.

Housing affordability is a minor issue in the upcoming Australian federal election, but the solutions that are being offered seem to comprise mainly of opening up more land in the outer suburbs where nobody wants to live much anyway. Since I can't count on the government to improve things, I've devised my own cunning scheme, one which requires no government involvement and one in which almost everyone wins.

Therefore I'm pleased to announce that from next weekend, all houses in Sydney will be half the price they were this past week. Now of course I'm yet to be granted the power to enforce this rule, so for now I need to rely on the good people of Sydney selling their houses to buy into my argument and reduce their asking prices on their own accord. But trust me, it will be worth it. Let's examine the winners and losers from this scheme.

Obviously people looking to buy their first houses in Sydney are big winners, as they will need far smaller deposits and mortgages. People selling houses would appear to be big losers, however keep in mind that most people sell houses to buy another one in the same market - so even though they are getting much less in the way of proceeds, they also need far less to buy their next place. And while they may still have large mortgages to pay off from the original purchase they would have had to pay that anyway. In the long term investors are no worse off either, as they make their money off growth rather than absolute price. Investors currently in the housing market will take a hit of course, but that's what happens from time to time in the world of investments, especially after a string of good years. Finally renters are also in a much better position, since the lowered cost of purchasing houses and maintaining loans can be passed on in lower rents.

Now to the losers. The main ones I can think of are real estate agents, banks and the government, all of whom make more profit the higher house prices go. And since these people are the primary reason why houses got so expensive in the first place, I won't lose a minute of sleep worrying about how my cunning scheme impacts them.

As with all amateur economists I'm sure my arguments are flawless. So as you sellers slash your prices, you should feel good that you're not just doing the right thing for society, you're doing the right thing for yourself. And you're also doing the right thing for me, as I may be able to finally get a house and stop wasting my Saturday mornings filing through house after house that I can't afford.