It’s not a new idea, but it’s a big one – one we should not ignore. Can a council’s regulations limit how many private properties one person can own? Say limit it to three or something? If they could, that would minimise the flow-down effect of locals and non-locals calling up real estate agents and buying up whatever they can for their investment portfolios. Doesn’t one guy own around 1,000 properties in Byron? When I was studying public health the idea was to stop the problem at the source, and not have to fix the accumulated and ongoing problems at the other end. Like fixing a leak.
The 60- or 90-day holiday letting cap would certainly help hugely, it is a great idea. Hopefully it will remedy the situation, but gosh it would be nice for the housing market to have some space to breathe.
It’s a moral thing too. Houses are a basic need, a necessity, and not commodities to be used for profit. Something needs to change. If one council does it, it could eventually reach around the entire country. Will we ever have the power to do that? How do we make these changes?
The next generations are already stuffed when it comes to owning their own home. How can we reverse this? We need regulations around the basic need of housing.
Don’t build more, just so more rich investors can gobble them up. Share the ones we already have. How many homes were empty on Census night? These are mostly holiday lets, and people’s investments, sitting there with no-one in them while so many live in their cars or on the streets. Let them invest in something else, like green energy, and leave the houses alone.
What is currently allowed is unsustainable and immoral. We are humans, we can’t forget that. We need each other, and if we don’t cooperate, it doesn’t work for anyone. Rich investors will have no hardworking locals to serve them at their favourite cafe, or fix their car, or serve their holidaymakers. We are one mass of people, the organism called humanity if you zoom out far enough. Allowing the cancer of greed to continue to take hold will not fare well for anyone.
So because foreign investment funds are allowed to buy up housing in Australia, not to mention foreign citizens, that means I can’t build houses to rent out to people, because that would reduce the number of houses available? 5% of Australians work in construction, but we are importing 400,000 people a year, who require more houses than we can build in a year.
Some of them might add to the construction and supply workforce though, especially in a targeted program.
You absolutely can underpay imported foreigners. The construction industry lobbies for higher emigration, as it drives down wages, drives up demand. But they only want people from third-world countries, as Europeans and Americans expect a livable wage.
Good old socialist mantra, you do not think things through before opening your mouths.
Greg, you do not think things through before scribbling. Do stay the course that has delivered the HousingFail.
Housing is an essential of life but the pollies do know so much better, yeah, they turned housing into an investment vehicle commodity.
The lucky few get to own one or many more ‘investment properties’ ( with $’sstaxpayer subsidy of Negative Gearing and Capital Gains Concessions ) as the rest can only dream of owning just 1 property that they can call, ‘their home’.
Luck did not get me my property. I didn’t win it in a lottery.
Landlords pay capital gains tax. Mansion dwellers who live in their own home DO NOT PAY CAPITAL GAINS TAX. A
Landlords who invests in rental properties so that THEY WILL HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY A HOUSE WHENTHEY MOVE TO THE BIG CITY will have to charge more rents to cover this extra cost when they move. When we became landlords 50 yrs ago there was no capital gains tax on rental properties and rents were affordable for low income families.
In the words of no doubt your favourite pollie, please explaoine!
If you go over to her youtube channel called ‘Please Explain’, she has made a bunch of animated cartoons that can explain all these things to you.
Sheri, would that proposed ban on owning multiple property’s also apply to Greens Members of Parliament who do own multiple properties?
I have been a landlord for 50 yrs. Got into the business when I got a “temporary” transfer to a mining site and added to the number because investing in rental properties is fairly easy to do when living at a remote site and I would have needed something more to sell if I moved to a capital city. (Sold 2 when we moved to Brisbane,) My take is that someone who owned 1000 houses would offer very secure renting because selling and buying costs money and it makes sense to stay with reliable tenants. Many of the operators I worked with used to buy “blocks of flats” A good source of reliable accommodation. A real part of the problem is that house size has grown dramatically doubling to 240m2!! during the time I have been a landlord. In addition, developers like to build full size houses up front rather that building a basic house that gets extra rooms later on. We should be talking about building houses that can be split into separate dwellings when the kids leave home and ban regulations that block doing things like approving the parking of tiny houses in back yards to provide more very affordable housing. You might also like to ask why landlords providing accommodation to low income people pay capital gains tax while rich people living in their near empty mansion do not?
You’re on the money. We need minimalist starter houses for young people. Also, people should be allowed to build a basic house, and add extensions as they can afford them, without all the red tape making it prohibitively expensive, or councils simply blocking them. That’s how housing was done pre-1980s.
John and Christian, now come on, you make too much sense. Eliminate all the green, red and all the other coloured tapes?. Make it easy to provide affordable housing?. Not likely while we suffer under an abnormally high rate of labor boofheads in government. If you want something to work, don’t involve a government. Just look at parrot head Bowen for example. Enough said?.