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An ABC news item today quoted a claim about the Australian property market without any indication that they verified it:

[Queensland] State Housing Minister Mick De Brenni said that last year more Australians bought their seventh home than those who bought their first [...]

I see this statement as ambiguous: it could refer to:

  • people who grew their current real-estate portfolio from six houses to seven, or
  • people who have bought homes seven times in the life, but may have sold up to six of them.

I find both claims extraordinary, but the second is a softer claim, so it seems fairer to the claimant to use that interpretation.

Did more home-buyers in Australia buy a home for the seventh time than the first in 2017?

It appears the original claim was quietly removed from the article after posting this question. (Hat-tip @Daniel and Reddit)

However, I believe the claim is still widely believed, based on the number of mentions on social media, including post-removal.

Twitter examples: @TeamSJW, zeroxcliche, @benhr, @YsadoraFemme, @gritfish, @laura_e_wynne

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  • That line of the article has quietly gone down the memory hole reddit.com/r/AustralianPolitics/comments/a4glmp/…
    – daniel
    Commented Dec 10, 2018 at 9:29
  • 2
    Related meta post: Does a notable claim remain notable if notable sources remove the claim?
    – gerrit
    Commented Dec 10, 2018 at 10:17
  • Q: What would be the relevance of this claim, i.e. what do they actually mean to say that they use this data tidbit for?
    – user22865
    Commented Dec 10, 2018 at 10:48
  • Dammit. My Facebook feed still has several examples of the claim.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Commented Dec 10, 2018 at 12:02
  • @JanDoggen: The implication is that housing has become unobtainable for young people, who are now forced to rent from rich landlords who can afford multiple properties.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Commented Dec 10, 2018 at 12:03

1 Answer 1

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No, the fact is not true. It appears to have been a mistake by the the Minister Mick De Brenni, that was not fact-checked by the ABC journalist.

The New Daily contacted the politician:

“The statistics referenced in that quote were misinterpreted from a Misha Zelinski article for the Huffington Post,” a spokesperson for the minister told The New Daily.

“The quote has now been removed from the relevant ministerial media statement, and we have contacted the ABC to get it removed from their article.”

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