Current government efforts "unlikely" to "result in a single new house being built," peak body says
Government assistance is crucial in addressing the nation’s social housing problem, according to the Real Estate Institute of Australia.
A recent report released by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) found that only 3,000 affordable social housing properties were built per year, against a requirement of 36,000.
REIA president Hayden Groves said the report identified several options for dealing with the shortage of affordable rental homes – all of which require government participation either in the provision of the housing or rental assistance.
“While this will assist in addressing an acute problem, the private rental market is predominantly mum-and-dad investors supplementing their superannuation savings, and they will remain an integral part of the rental market moving forward,” Groves said. “Australian real estate agencies – family-owned and operated small businesses – manage a combined property management portfolio worth $3 trillion and manage $78 billion in rents each year. To keep this critical component of the housing sector you need to similarly provide an appropriate playing field, which includes negative gearing as interest rates increase. It does not need draconian measures such as rent freezes or additional land taxes.”
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Groves said that the housing affordability crisis was largely the result of a failure to build a sufficient number of homes in Australia.
“The federal government’s recent announcement to host roundtables with lenders and developers in a bid to address housing affordability is unlikely of itself to be a circuit-breaker,” he said. “While the treasurer is busily consulting superannuation funds and banks on how to finance additional investment, it is unlikely this will result in a single new house being built. You need to have local and state governments approving developments, setting standards and working, with the building sector and estate agents who bring current market intelligence involved in the process.”
Groves said that a recent report on the news program Four Corners, “No Place to Call Home”, addressed “in a very raw way” how Australians are “caught at the nexus of social and affordable housing” and demonstrated the seriousness of the current crisis.
“We support a national plan that will address housing affordability that benefits all key stakeholders and helps Australians into homes,” Groves said.
