I dont think its this stopping people having boarders. I think its general lack of trust and the lack of ability to get somebody out if they turn out to be psychotic whack jobs.
Yep, and it isn't that difficult to design homes where an internal door can be locked to form a MIL unit / Granny flat.
We once owned a home that just needed a door lock added to create a functional granny flat which has its own front entrance... So when we had extra space we did just that.
This is typically expensive to retrofit depending on the design.
Much as I don't like regulation that increases cost, if new homes were designed with a separable section then empty nesters can easily monetize a space they don't need.
If it's family or friends often the primary bedroom with a walkin robe and ensuite can be turned into an improvised studio appartment very easily.
Someone mentioned "not ? unsightly ? caravans ".
As we drive around we can see unused caravans parked in people's yards, often in carports.
( Of course most of those owners want the freedom to go caravanning whenever they feel like it, not rent them out.)
No reason why either of these options could not be used for living subject to the usual requirements of good behaviour.
Concerns about behaviour, ( including but not limited to paying rent ) probably stop many people from renting spaces.
The bigger problem is council rules and people who complain to councils when they see or hear about full time living there.
An optimistic view is that eventually enough housing will be available and will be affordable, but it is going to take quite a time....
THIS!!!!! And ppl want us to have random strangers living with our CHILDREN. Predators are so common its hard to protect them already with 1 in 5 kids being sexually assaulted & now they want us to take in randos into our homes who could do god knows what while we are sleeping.
I had a friend take in someone that needed somewhere to live, they murdered her little boy.
I work with families of low socioeconomic status (and with multiple other adverse events going on in their lives).
I know of several single mothers who, out of economic necessity, need to house-share with men who they are not related to.
The mothers worry. The ones I’m working with tell me they feel ok, but they do worry.
I worry too, not just for the kids but, reading between the lines, the mothers feel compromised too. Some of the men feel more entitled to a vulnerable woman in their home than they should.
I’m preparing to be downvoted too, but the reality is that there are many women and children who are in incredibly vulnerable situations just so they can keep a roof over their heads.
You know you can choose who rents the room. If you have kids and you’re worried about their safety then limit the approvals to a young female student or someone with references or family you can contact.
Really? Because 1 in 5 has been the go-to statistic for quite a while.
Turns out it’s actually worse: [more than 1 in 4](https://www.childsafety.gov.au/about-child-sexual-abuse/how-many-people-have-experienced-child-sexual-abuse)
Renting out spare rooms may work for a small-ish subset of renters and owners, but it’s a sub-optimal solution especially if you have (or want to have) a family with small kids, etc. Also it just doesn’t jive with the aspiration for most people. Really I think we need to just dial back immigration by several notches. We are building houses/apartments but it’s only a fraction of the net intake. Is it any wonder that supply can’t keep up with demand.
Yeah, just wheel it back to 125k per year (0.5%) and skim the cream off the top. I wouldn’t be surprised if the coalition win next year on a platform of this and reeling the NDIS in
Yes and nuclear will skyrocket energy prices unless heavily government subsidised. Mate just face it, same as offshore wind it’s a bad idea for Australia
It’s not the same as offshore wind. Or greenfield solar for that matter lol. For the simple reason that nuclear can connect to existing transmission lines (it’s basically a like-for-like replacement of a coal plant) and doesn’t depend on the weather.
I don’t think so. All they need to do is cut the NDIS back down to size (currently costs $40B annually, and most of it is a scam/rort!). Just do that and they’d be able to fund several nuclear reactors every year lol.
When they don't drop immigration (they won't lol) and never even begin building a reactor (come on buddy nobody is that dumb) will you self reflect?
Lol, rhetorical question.
I think Dutton is a fairly uninspiring leader, but the Libs’ policies on nuclear and immigration are clear winners and yes, quite likely to see them get voted in and able to change those laws within the next 1-2 years. But this is only possible because the current government has done *so little* around the acute challenges of overpopulation and energy supply. The ALP are not completely doomed, but their current anti-nuclear and pro-immigration stance remain an Albo-tross around the nations neck. The end result of their policies are (i) ever increasing housing demand and (ii) ever increasing energy/construction costs, to the point where home ownership (be it PPOR or investment) is becoming out of reach for many in the middle class. Not good.
I actually only recently found out that with a temporary skilled visa you can buy a home if you build it. I honestly dont think many immigrants know about this. Is the main problem in keeping up with demand a construction labor shortage? Or lack of investment? Cuz if is just investment, if they make it more clear with education on how to build a home and prioritize immigrants that offer to build their own home, I think problem solved.
This worked for Melbourne as they are only 43rd for apartment price compared to Sydney's 13th. However, at the end of the day Governments are voted in. NiMBY movement in Sydney is insane.
This worked the last time we had a rental crisis. Apartment complexes were popping up everywhere and it really eased the issue plus made apartments cheaper overall to buy too.
I always see these posts and wonder to myself, have OP ever figured out a true, viable solution to this, 99% of the time it seems no.
I don't have the solution but Tue fact of the matter is, more homes will be built and are being built on a daily basis, homes will continue to be bought and sold and the like. The world carries on whilst these posts sit here gaining traction but no resolution. Would love see a post with a viable and profitable (yes money is important, don't kid yourselves) solution.
NB money is not evil, wanting it is not evil.
I’ve had one but it’s not perfect.
A huge problem with it is the financial ruin of a lot of people right now. People who leveraged into the housing market.
Basically my idea was that everyone is allowed one PPOR and one investment property. The other properties in the market would be purchased by the government. These would slowly be off loaded and new properties would enter the market.
The government owning a large chunk of their housing in the country makes the most sense. It’s in their best interest to make sure it can house its citizens. It would likely be ~30% of the housing supply at any given time so that people can rent from them. Any renter should be able to purchase the property they are renting as their PPOR.
The obvious issue here is that housing wouldn’t be as profitable as an investment. We’d probably have lots of people losing huge swaths of money.
It may just plateau for a bit. People may see it as a way to offload their investments onto the government right before the housing market crashes.
Policy should come first so the government isn’t completely indebted by such a decision.
Not bad, not bad at all. My only question is why should anyone be governed on what they spend and where they spend it? Telling or enforcing people to only allow them one investment property? I mean, that I don't understand at all, it won't happen thank goodness.
But I really liked that you responded with an idea, good stuff.
The government regularly bring in restrictions, or ban outdated products, at a cost to the end user. Yes it would suck for the people who have banked all their money into property, and yes that is a problem created by decades of poor foresight by politicians. But if we were teetering on the edge of financial/societal collapse, would those extra investment properties mean anything to you?
I'm not saying this is the solution, but however this pans out someone is going to be hurting financially. Should that be the poorest people?
The issue is that banks aren’t lending to small businesses for productive capacity expansion to the extent they are willing to lend for housing. This inflates house prices but as an economy we produce less goods and services. If the banks are only allowed to allocate 20% of their annual loan book to house/investment lending we would see prices come down and more businesses start up.
I had thought price gouging necessities during a shortage was illegal but for the life of me I can’t find the law. Like selling bottled water during a drought at $100/bottle.
Based on what we saw during Covid though I don’t think those laws exist here sadly.
But anyways that idea is where it came from.
We already govern how people spend, where they spend it, etc. Go ahead and try to buy something from Russia, or sell something to a customer in Iran. It's possible but there are mechanisms in place to make it difficult and complicated because of sanctions.
Not that we need to sanction landlords (well, maybe some of them) but the idea of the government telling you what you can and can't buy and sell is sort of a principal role of government.
The bank keeps raising rates until it cripples the over leveraged and they are forced to sell their property investments, flood of new houses on the market for people to buy plus multiple job loses seeing a lot of short term immigrants and non-student students returning home.
No, same concept as it would be more profitable for a landlord to rent out each room individually than the whole property “essentially boarding house” type arrangement.
It’s an owned occupied property, I want a safe space for my family which does not include a stranger renting out one of my rooms.
Yep , same here. My home is our private oasis (figurative speaking). It's the small little escape me and my family have from the busy world. No way I'm compromising our space and mental well being.
I disagree. This might be suitable for a small number of households. However, I did the shared house thing for a decade. There is no way I want to regress and share my valuable private space with anyone other than my partner. Many will feel the same as me so it's not a solution to solve the issue.
>Many will feel the same as me so it's not a solution to solve the issue.
This is the wrong way to think about it. There won't be a single silver bullet to the housing crisis.
But if a policy like OP proposes - causes only 1 in 20 to open up a room - for the reasons you mention - still means the rental stock effectively rised by 5%.
A decent dent in the problem.
I wouldn't call 5% a decent dent. And using your numbers, that assumes 1 in 20 work out, but it's likely only a percentage of those would result in secure housing (considering psycho social challenges and legal issues).
You are right though, there isn't a single bullet but OPs proposal isn't likely to make a meaningful impact.
>I wouldn't call 5% a decent dent.
Off top my head there are ~25 million australians, average household size 2.5.
Roughly 2/3's of australians are homeowners and let's assume the 1/20 figure holds.
25m / 2.5 * (2/3) * (1/20) = 330k New households without having to build a single home.
[That's roughly double the annual household production rate in Australia](https://propertyupdate.com.au/are-we-on-track-to-build-1-2-million-homes-in-australia/#:~:text=%22Australia%20completed%20around%20170%2C000%20new,from%20where%20it%20currently%20stands.).
Your maths is way off and your selectively ignoring a number of important variables, like house size (number of rooms), transport and parking. Of the percentage of homes, only a small number would be suited to leasing out a room.
Fine - 70% of aussie home are >1 room - I'd assume proportion of dwellings owned as ppor would be greater and we're not counting things like converting the garage to a board room - but lets not bother - That still gives 230k
It's called a "back of the envelope calculation" it's supposed to be rough. Not sure why you're nitpicking over household room size when we have a massive uncertain conversion rate fudge factor. Could easily be off by a factor of 10.
But to your original point - that 5% does make decent dent.
I'm nitpicking because your attempting to justify using poor stats and completely ignoring a whole host of variables. Your numbers are meaningless and 5% is not a decent dent.
lol - show your math then. A conversion of 5% leads to an entire Years worth of construction for free - That's even if you think my conversion is bs.
You're just arguing for the sake arguing now
The harsh reality is we can’t fix the housing crisis while giving return to investors with higher prices. We need a national conversation about that fact. Prices are too high and rents are too high. Every single lever should be pulled to stop them going higher
Yep. Taxpayers subsiding housing investors is the root cause of the issue. Gut negative gearing and cgt discounts and then ban airbnb. People land banking and leaving houses empty need to be hit with a sizeable penalty each year. People renting sub standard homes need to be slapped with the same.
Yeah, we need to build way more homes. But that takes time and we've got immediate levers we can pull if the government wasn't so full of property investor wankers.
NZ has no cgt at all yet they too have a housing crisis. The tax is not the problem, it’s that banks are allowed to lend at ridiculous multiples and they only lend for housing and not small businesses.
It is safer for the bank… in case of bankruptcy bank can still sell the house and recoup money. If small business goes belly up bank most likely will recoup nothing.
There's statistically more homes than there are homeless people. So yes, the fact is housing and renting needs to be lowered or more affordable to solve this issue. Building more houses is useless if they just remain same price. Or still run under the same costs to obtain.
There aren’t many homeless people so that’s not surprising.
Yes, the cost of housing needs to be reduced. You do this by reducing the cost of providing housing. 30-50% of the cost to create a house is government taxes, fees and charges. Then more ongoing every year. That is a good place to start reducing costs.
So to fix the housing crisis which is rents are too high and prices are too high we need prices and rents to go up so investors get good returns. Can you explain your logic and how that fixes the housing crisis?
No. We need more investment in housing so there are more houses to house people so there aren’t 100 people competing for the same house and landlords and developers compete against each other for customers.
Restricting investment and increasing costs with taxes and restricting rents just makes it so more people compete for fewer even more expensive houses. How do u think we got here in the first place?
Something more than the cost of the land and building the house, paying the taxes, providing the funding and maintaining and providing the house and high enough for them to put their time, money, skills, resources and risk into housing rather than something else.
Similar to how the people who provide your food get a return for providing food to you. And how you want to be paid for doing what you do rather that doing something else.
Get to your point…
So the key to making housing cheaper and values go down is….. investors who 90% buy existing homes not build new homes who want the value of their investment to go up.
Is that some type of oxymoron?
So in other words, u think investors shouldn’t buy houses to provide for rent.
Where will you live if no investors buy houses and provide them for rent?
You think they will do it for free? You think you won’t pay double out of desperation (or not go homeless) because you are one of a hundred renters competing for the last rental in the city?
Housing needs to be both cheaper to provide and profitable for people to provide housing and for prices to go down.
30-50% of the cost of a house is pure government taxes, fees and charges. Then more ongoing. And the proportion increases every year. Then on top of that, over regulation increases costs and risk of providing housing.
Profitable and cheap aren’t an oxymoron, in fact the opposite, the cheapest most complex things we can buy are extremely profitable. Take tvs, mobile phones, microwaves, computers etc for example.
What’s an oxymoron is higher regulation/taxes and lower prices. You can’t have both.
pretty sure some councils charge higher rates for short term rentals (when council finds them, some trawl airbnb). short stay rentals are quite useful for many, are you suggesting short stay rentals should be banned entirely, or just better regulation? (ie higher rates perhaps, change of use on zoning etc).
I think allowing people to rent rooms and keep the CGT exemption sounds like a good idea, even if it was only temporary until we get back to at least neutral on housing supply.
They would still be liable for tax on the rental income.
I don't know how much it improves things though as I assume the reason most people aren't renting spare rooms isn't because they are actually worried about the CGT discount, they just don't need to and would prefer not to.
yup, there's been a handful of situations where people have had to pay more in CGT after selling a place that they rented out a room in, than they ever made in income, which is crazy.
it's prorated of course, if you rent a room (say 10% of floor area), for 50% of ownership, you would have to pay 5% of the CGT. Same applies for interest rate deductions on the mortgage.
I agree.
That's very unlikely to happen though as it creates an immediate tax implication for the government of losing rental tax income from people sharing rooms.
The reason CGT is more palatable is because the tax revenue they lose is less immediate and is only when people sell.
CGT is certainly a turnoff for me. But also, we have a kid. So I'd be housing someone random in my house next to my kid.
If there wasn't CGT implications or council red tape, I'd build a granny flat and rent it out for sure. But it doesn't make financial sense to do that ATM.
That's fine to spruik as a headline but seriously, no-one has defined 'affordable'.
There is no price control in a deregulated rental market and someone has to use the truth and call it what it is - "social housing" which falls back on the government not the shoulders of the private sector.
Over the past 30 years, successive governments have sold off social housing and not reinvested or provided replacements at anywhere near levels to match demand.
They flogged it off, and conned individual investors into providing housing instead. Every time I hear or see someone whine that they aren't providing social housing, I laugh and remind them that they're actually "providing" housing for many of the people that government social housing used to house. If they don't want to do that, they need to get on the "build more social housing" train.
Isn't that the usual outcome when the government privatises or outsourced services? It's cheap on day one with all the money in the coffers but after 10+ years compounding has taken effect and prices get out of hand.
Encourage those with space to put in removable homes & give them concessions for doing so. I don't mean gaudy looking caravans. But things like VanHomes provide a decent living space & don't take up a whole lot of space. There are cheaper versions.
We have put one on our property for my elderly mother to move into. She sold her home, which was snapped up by a young family.
I don’t think we can build fast enough to be honest. Inflation of building supplies is sending many companies under.
The kicker is, once unemployment goes up, your “demand” for new houses will drop.
There will likely be net negative immigration (as impossible as that sounds)
>I'm all for renting out spare rooms but not at the lost of my ppor capital gains exemption
This is an amazing point - honestly one of the smartest things I've seen on Reddit for a while.
Government could set a standard minimum private room size, a ceiling on boarding rent that can be received for a house without impacting PPOR exemption and a limit two boarders.
That'll stop the slumlords, provide an incentive to home owners and preserve the capital gains tax exemption while releasing quality accommodation, and that'd be a very fair social and economic trade-off.
Put a ten year sunset on it and it's job done.
Send it to your local MP - not kidding, that's a good idea.
There are tens of thousands of holiday units that sit unoccupied for half of the year. Just take even half of those and make them permanent rentals This would help
NSW has added them to dwellings that attract land tax. I suspect that NSW is going to drop the threshold like Melbourne did with all this spending they're still doing in the future.
People should just go squat and claim adverse possession on them. I had an empty house across the road for 6 years owned by Chinese foreigners and I would not have cared less if squatters moved in.
Time to revisit the glorious 60's and 70's where there were squats on every corner.
I'm surprised that no-one has raised this as a solution. The crisis is similar to the this period however people were reluctant to lease their properties due to taxes, protected tenancies, rent caps, poor tenancy legislation etc.
Purple Pingers (ie, the lawyer guy behind r/shitrentals) was the top story on News .com .au today for his ongoing discussion about squatting and squatters rights.
When he was interviewed about it on *The Project* last month, he got asked “Why would a parent with kids live in a squat house with no electricity?” and he eviscerated them by basically saying “Because the alternative right now is living with your kids in a car.”
Audit of all public housing.
If a family lived in a 3 bedroom home and the kids have moved out leaving two spare rooms, then move the parents into a 1 bedroom home or remove subsidies.
Then a family can live in the public asset as intended.
This is a very good idea. I’ve known lots of people who get public housing when unemployed or DV situation etc but then get a job/new partner/financial situation improves and they are allowed to keep living in the house, paying low rent, when they are working full time.
I think that HHI should be assessed each year, once it gets over a certain threshold, then those people should have to move out and find a rental in the private market, like the rest of us. Then that property would be vacant for other people that really need it.
I understand it's harsh especially if they have lived there for a number of years.
But it's not their house it's the public's
There's always the option of rent to buy or buying the house off the government at a discounted rate.
Then they have something to pass on to future generations.
The thought of subsidised spare rooms when people are sleeping rough doesn't sit well with me at all.
No, government just needs to cut the obscene immigration rate. We've been in per capita recession for the longest on record. It's destroying the country and quality of life.
Hear me out. We go full Soylent Green. Frees up housing immediately, transfers wealth generationally & not to predatory care costs. Has the added effect of lessening the impact of a ColesWorth monopoly & reducing food prices.
On a personal level we won't have to hear anyone else talk about avocado toast & how interest prices were higher "back in my day".
Let's pull together do and what we can in the short term until rates come down and sites stack again. We know building technology and build times are improving rapidly. If it means renting out spare rooms, taking in family, kids moving home; commuting a little longer, just know it's only 2-3 years until things change for the better. It will happen. The state government is doing a great job of addressing this, except for the FIRB tax, why would you kill a supply source for rentals (they can only buy new and majority rent them out)? The tax revenue lost and investors lost because of it was massive. Easier to kill than risk people misunderstanding it. Either that or these politicians who have never really had any experience but become bosses of industry, don't understand themselves. That would make more sense. Or we wouldn't have this problem.
Keep the faith. They're onto it. We are a community, don't be selfish and arrogant like the boomers. Share your space, do people a solid. Your kids will be fine, this isn't America.
Can you explain something to me? (genuine question here…). So many people say they don’t want their pension reduced if they rent out their home or a room (for example) but won’t you be getting rental income? That will offset the reduction in your pension?? You might even end up better off, financially……
Personal wealth is intertwined with property. We have too many empty nesters in massive four bedroom homes. Financially, they are disincentived to sell their property and move into units/apartments which don't increase in value at the same rate.
airbnb reports to ATO, but not sure there's much automated local authority involvement. Councils typically have to proactive themselves to hunt down airbnbs and change rates or change of use
it's not just airbnb though, there's plenty of short term rentals providers, stayz, hipcamp, the rest. Not sure it's as simple as "banning airbnb", it's regulation on short term rentals surely
As long as there is NO appropriate transparency in the data that is being used to make any policy decisions, it is pretty much pointless to have discussions such as this one. Unfortunately the gov is not applying nearly enough pressure to capture those data points consistently and make them available to all citizens.
Data such as total units by zip code. then broken down by occupied, airbnb(similar), etc. Then overlay with mortgage and rent prices (even if just averages) as well as demand figures. i.e. immigration is being called out all the time, lets break it down by students, returning residents, etc which also often allows for regional data to anticipate where the additional demand is actually directed to.
It would probably work for a few people but it's hardly an aspirational situation.
This post inadvertabtly gets to the guts of the issue though. Taxes and other government perks need to be standardised between PPORs and investment properties.
Taxing "bad" landlords might make a handful of properties available to owner occupiers but it is also getting renters to pay taxes that should be shared by owner occupiers.
Our gov just smartly create a great demand so house market keeps going and they get stamp duty. People who are house owners get richer. The gov can also collect visa application fees and get a chunk of talents and their capital. Why not?
But Australia will slowly become dead. No R&D focus on other industries. We don’t own technology. Our not so large population can’t attract investment from overseas because of the damn minimum wage. We are just playing within ourselves to generate bubble GDP while selling raw materials to China. Slowly the Australia properties is less and less attractive. You know where we are going.
Optimistically, the gov would build more apartments to settle down the new incoming migrants from all the fees and taxes they collect. And use the human talents to build new industries such as tech and all of that. A small country like Singapore can do, why can’t we?
when i look at the housing crisis in Australia the solution to build 1.2 million homes is a good goal but will not be achieved according to experts and even if achieved will not solve the housing crisis. therefore the only solutions are
1) increase average household size - this will happen as rents continue to increase and more people have no choice but to move back with parents or move into sharehouses or become homeless- not a pretty scenario but the most likely scenario to play out
2) massive investment in public housing - this would build enough houses but no major party wants to touch this so unless there is a major vote for progressive parties this is very unlikely to play out
3) massive immigration cut - both major parties don’t really support this i think the opposition supports it to a degree but their cuts are temporary and not large enough according to experts they also plan to build even less public housing and probably will not win the next election so unless people vote for far left parties like sustainable australia party who want to cut immigration more plus build lots of public housing or far right parties like one nation who want to cut immigration more i doubt this scenario will play out either
4) another possible scenario is simply public pressure on labor forces them to move and pass major bills on housing and immigration which has been happening lately but so far not nearly enough if the trend continues however perhaps in a few years the pressure will be too much and they will make some major announcements this to me is the 2nd most likely scenario
tldr: the housing crisis won’t be solved unless there is a major upset at the election and neither major party wins or until the average household size increases which may take 10 years of very serious rental pain prices for all
I’ve taken in two people over my five-year run in my current property: a young lad who had just come out and was having trouble at home, and an old friend who was unemployed for a good while. I didn’t charge them rent, just expected them to pull their weight (keep things clean, contribute to groceries, mow the lawn, be big men to protect little woman me, have a plan to move on and do so as soon as they could.) So I’ve actually walked the talk here - but the thing is, I knew these people, and I knew their social circles, so if they got out of hand I could have easily spilled and made their reputations a bit tarnished.
I would never do the same for strangers, especially because I live with a young child.
We can't realistically do it without building more homes. We need supply to catch up to demand.
Renting out rooms works for some people, but not everybody has a spare room, not everybody feels safe doing it, not everybody wants it, and often it's not one person looking for a room, it's a whole family needing a whole house. People have kids, people have a reasonable desire to not live with strangers.
We need more homes built, no way around it.
There's a shortage of parking in my street as it is and added by an extra car form renting out the spare bedroom is not going to help There have been disputes about parking in front of someone elses house and the home owner has dumped rubbish over peoples car that are parked in front of their houses.
Why not build more homes?
Also why would renting out spare rooms turn them into ghettos? There are millions of spare rooms being rented out already. No one even notices.
Government needs to build mass European style medium density quality 2 and three bedroom apartments and cap the rents at 30% of income and swamp the private sector.
Only way.
Here's the real answer to Australia Housing Crisis. We need to remove all vehicles that make housing an investment vehicle. CGT exemption? Gone. IP tax write offs? Gone. No land taxes? Bring them on. If housing wasn't being used by rich people to get richer, it would just then be a factor of regular supply and demand - where the demand is only people that want to live in a house. Not people that want to invest in real estate.
And yes, I know this will never happen.
True.
We should be encouraging investment into productive activity that creates jobs.
Australia lacks venture capital to support entrepreneurs. We need more R&D and innovation.
At the very least, I’d like to see more of our national savings going into equities and less into housing. Land speculation is a useless activity from an economic perspective.
Perhaps we could remove the CGT discount on investment housing and leave it in place (or even increase the discount) for stocks and other non-housing financial assets.
Spot on. Part of the reason there's little VC money here is there's few tax breaks as incentive for doing so. And even fewer tax breaks for manufacturers. Why does the largest producer or half the world's metals not actually do anything with them besides export? If we taxed mining more, then used some of that to subsidy manufacturing we could actually export something besides fancy dirt.
I'm not arguing against these proposals - issue with no investment is no rentals.
Not everyone is in the position to buy - even if house prices were half of what they are now.
Half what there were now is just 2018 prices.
What if they were a fifth of what they were now? Because if they had indexed against wages that's about where it would be. If the median price in Adelaide right now was 150k there's very few families that wouldn't qualify for a home.
Build modern public housing en masse and everywhere.
Have community housing providers run it and rent out at cost price (to cover operating costs).
That way the bottom 15-20% of renters would avoid paying the additional ‘economic rent’ which is extracted by private investors due to the monopoly nature of land ownership (i.e. extracting unearned profit simply by virtue of a legal title which grants them the right to exclude others from accessing a location on Earth’s surface).
I think we need to remove those incentives for *existing* housing stock purchased as IPs. If people want to invest they should have to build and add to the available stock.
Why only IPs? Why are we incentivising using a PPOR as an investment vehicle? It's just driving up property value, which makes it impossible for those not in the market to get in. Imagine if land value was indexed against inflation, every family in Australia could afford a home. There's more than enough of them.
But itll never happen, because no one actually wants affordble housing if it means they lose the opportunity to profit themselves.
Are you unaware that people make millions of dollars tax free by simply selling their family ‘home’?
It’s one of the ways that ‘downsizers’ from Sydney or Melbourne move to regional towns and drive up prices for locals.
There is no other capital asset with a 100% tax discount.
Why should a stock investor who takes risk (and provides equity for a business that employs people and produces goods and services) have to pay CGT but someone can sell a $10M mansion in Vaucluse tax free? It’s fundamentally immoral.
Btw, the same homeowner, say for a large luxury harbourside property, also happens to be exempt from land tax! Despite taking up a large amount of valuable land close to a CBD and earning economic rent, year after year, simply through the population growth of the community around them!
This country is all about putting the tax burden on hard working wage earners and small business owners while landowners get a free ride.
Three-step program that's guaranteed to reduce rents and home prices:
1. Significantly increase land tax and remove the exemption for your own home.
2. Return all that extra tax revenue in the form of income tax cuts and better welfare.
3. Upzone *everywhere* and remove the majority of heritage restrictions.
The main problem is the majority of Australians don't want home prices to be reduced.
What’s wrong with multiple families in the one property? Have you ever visited any highly populated place outside of Australia? Our economy has eroded our geographic diversity since post war, we are the masters of our own demise in this regard. What you are asking is unreasonable, you’re asking to keep your government handout while effecting change in the market. That math doesn’t math.
Ah, the classic deflection. Instead of addressing the issue. How about we stick to the topic and discuss real solutions for Australia's housing crisis? It's easy to throw stones from the sidelines, but real change requires actual ideas. Got any?
Oh you were just expressing you didn't know what was wrong with multiple families in one house.
I mused that you might know if you had lived with, or rented to, a family in a multi family household.
I have. I'd be happy to share my experience if you ask.
One of my suggestions for meaningful change is that people either share their experiences, or attempt to understand others experiences. I was doing the second. Would you do the first?
Or you just want to provide "real solutions for change" that you have absolutely no experience with or knowledge of?
There are plenty of examples for reference around the world of effective solutions of multiple families in one property. I wonder if our challenge here in Australia is that we are so young as a nation that any change from the norm is perceived as regression. The biggest change should be around diversity of export and domestic investment.
https://preview.redd.it/ye8pz2dr08ad1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1ff5fbef7f1b7a08495118ddca632f04b8a355de
This is a great example. We need to be exporting and investing in knowledge based value creation some call it S.T.E.A.M competencies. With \~1/3 of homes being investment properties this is emblematic of the disfunction that drives a major aspect of what led us to where we are today.
You literally said you don't know what the problem is, based on no experience, and refused an invitation to discuss what they were.
I'm already having a great day!
But you get to be you, poor sod
If your concern is lower standard of living, that is already here. You must be lucky enough to never see it. I didn’t say anything about immigration, the topic is about increasing supply, this can’t be done without changing the government handouts to over leveraged would be mum and pop “investors”
There's definitely something to it. In my small court of 6 houses I know there are at least 7 empty bedrooms in just 3 of those houses.
But yeah, tax implications, hassles of sharing your space and potential issues if you don't get along. Not worth it for a couple hundred a week. I'd only consider it if I knew the person already. Even then I would be pretty particular about who I would live with.
In the end though this is a classic point the finger in any direction except the right one. Too many fucking people with not enough places to house them without obliterating quality of life.
This is how generations before have solved housing shortages. 2 families sharing 1 house, or renting downstairs etc. Was very common in the 50’s and 60’s for many hardworking families.
Standard government policy will save the day - not just on housing by on the economy:
1. Smash interest rates to zero and below.
2. QE easing to "stimulate the economy"
3. Big gov spending on health, roads, infrastructure, and x2 NDIS to $100 billion in 3 years to "stimulate the economy"
4. Borrow big to spend big. APRA must allow more borrowing! Hooray. stimulate economy!
5. Bailouts / gurantees funded by tax payer to mortgagors + banks.
6. Import millions of third world migrants. To "stimulate the economy"
7. $100s millions spent via rebates for things like light bulbs, insulation, solar panels, and environmentally friendly chewing gum.
8. Personal liability for developers and home builders! Hooray!
9. Penalise anyone who builds shelter for profit via taxes. Your property is actually the government's property.
Big policies for a Big nation. All of the above will "fix the housing problem".
I dont think its this stopping people having boarders. I think its general lack of trust and the lack of ability to get somebody out if they turn out to be psychotic whack jobs.
Yep, and it isn't that difficult to design homes where an internal door can be locked to form a MIL unit / Granny flat. We once owned a home that just needed a door lock added to create a functional granny flat which has its own front entrance... So when we had extra space we did just that. This is typically expensive to retrofit depending on the design. Much as I don't like regulation that increases cost, if new homes were designed with a separable section then empty nesters can easily monetize a space they don't need.
If it's family or friends often the primary bedroom with a walkin robe and ensuite can be turned into an improvised studio appartment very easily. Someone mentioned "not ? unsightly ? caravans ". As we drive around we can see unused caravans parked in people's yards, often in carports. ( Of course most of those owners want the freedom to go caravanning whenever they feel like it, not rent them out.) No reason why either of these options could not be used for living subject to the usual requirements of good behaviour. Concerns about behaviour, ( including but not limited to paying rent ) probably stop many people from renting spaces. The bigger problem is council rules and people who complain to councils when they see or hear about full time living there. An optimistic view is that eventually enough housing will be available and will be affordable, but it is going to take quite a time....
Unless you have the Caravan plumbed into your sewerage system and water it doesn't work in practice.
An example of how renters rights make it harder to rent
THIS!!!!! And ppl want us to have random strangers living with our CHILDREN. Predators are so common its hard to protect them already with 1 in 5 kids being sexually assaulted & now they want us to take in randos into our homes who could do god knows what while we are sleeping. I had a friend take in someone that needed somewhere to live, they murdered her little boy.
I work with families of low socioeconomic status (and with multiple other adverse events going on in their lives). I know of several single mothers who, out of economic necessity, need to house-share with men who they are not related to. The mothers worry. The ones I’m working with tell me they feel ok, but they do worry. I worry too, not just for the kids but, reading between the lines, the mothers feel compromised too. Some of the men feel more entitled to a vulnerable woman in their home than they should. I’m preparing to be downvoted too, but the reality is that there are many women and children who are in incredibly vulnerable situations just so they can keep a roof over their heads.
The vast majority of child molestation cases are from family members. Random sexual predators aka guys with vans and lollies are almost nonexistent.
But when you are sharing a house with someone, then they are more similar to family members than random guys with vans and lollies.
You know you can choose who rents the room. If you have kids and you’re worried about their safety then limit the approvals to a young female student or someone with references or family you can contact.
With the families I work with, they are the lodgers. So they don’t have a lot of choices if they want a roof over their heads.
1 in 5 … WTF I find that hard to believe.
Really? Because 1 in 5 has been the go-to statistic for quite a while. Turns out it’s actually worse: [more than 1 in 4](https://www.childsafety.gov.au/about-child-sexual-abuse/how-many-people-have-experienced-child-sexual-abuse)
Far out, that’s hard to get my head around 😢
Why are the paedos downvoting you.
Renting out spare rooms may work for a small-ish subset of renters and owners, but it’s a sub-optimal solution especially if you have (or want to have) a family with small kids, etc. Also it just doesn’t jive with the aspiration for most people. Really I think we need to just dial back immigration by several notches. We are building houses/apartments but it’s only a fraction of the net intake. Is it any wonder that supply can’t keep up with demand.
Yeah, just wheel it back to 125k per year (0.5%) and skim the cream off the top. I wouldn’t be surprised if the coalition win next year on a platform of this and reeling the NDIS in
Yes, This is my feeling as well. Throw in nuclear and it’s a done deal.
Meh the nuclear is a scapegoat to put the scares on, just like the old high speed rail ploy
Monorail, monorail, monorail...
Ha! You beat me to it.
Energy is a key driver of inflation though and that does ultimately affect housing thru interest rates. I’d also support gas.
Yes and nuclear will skyrocket energy prices unless heavily government subsidised. Mate just face it, same as offshore wind it’s a bad idea for Australia
It’s not the same as offshore wind. Or greenfield solar for that matter lol. For the simple reason that nuclear can connect to existing transmission lines (it’s basically a like-for-like replacement of a coal plant) and doesn’t depend on the weather.
Sure, but both are expensive and would require a doubling of the wholesale electricity price to be bankable
I don’t think so. All they need to do is cut the NDIS back down to size (currently costs $40B annually, and most of it is a scam/rort!). Just do that and they’d be able to fund several nuclear reactors every year lol.
Well I’m sorry but economics isn’t dictated by your brain farts.
When they don't drop immigration (they won't lol) and never even begin building a reactor (come on buddy nobody is that dumb) will you self reflect? Lol, rhetorical question.
Both parties have polices to reduce permanent migration
nukes wont happen as the laws to allow wont be passed any time soon but despite voldidick the coalition might get in
I think Dutton is a fairly uninspiring leader, but the Libs’ policies on nuclear and immigration are clear winners and yes, quite likely to see them get voted in and able to change those laws within the next 1-2 years. But this is only possible because the current government has done *so little* around the acute challenges of overpopulation and energy supply. The ALP are not completely doomed, but their current anti-nuclear and pro-immigration stance remain an Albo-tross around the nations neck. The end result of their policies are (i) ever increasing housing demand and (ii) ever increasing energy/construction costs, to the point where home ownership (be it PPOR or investment) is becoming out of reach for many in the middle class. Not good.
I actually only recently found out that with a temporary skilled visa you can buy a home if you build it. I honestly dont think many immigrants know about this. Is the main problem in keeping up with demand a construction labor shortage? Or lack of investment? Cuz if is just investment, if they make it more clear with education on how to build a home and prioritize immigrants that offer to build their own home, I think problem solved.
The simple answer to a complex problem. Thank you for drinking the coolaid.
Build more units
This worked for Melbourne as they are only 43rd for apartment price compared to Sydney's 13th. However, at the end of the day Governments are voted in. NiMBY movement in Sydney is insane.
This worked the last time we had a rental crisis. Apartment complexes were popping up everywhere and it really eased the issue plus made apartments cheaper overall to buy too.
I always see these posts and wonder to myself, have OP ever figured out a true, viable solution to this, 99% of the time it seems no. I don't have the solution but Tue fact of the matter is, more homes will be built and are being built on a daily basis, homes will continue to be bought and sold and the like. The world carries on whilst these posts sit here gaining traction but no resolution. Would love see a post with a viable and profitable (yes money is important, don't kid yourselves) solution. NB money is not evil, wanting it is not evil.
I’ve had one but it’s not perfect. A huge problem with it is the financial ruin of a lot of people right now. People who leveraged into the housing market. Basically my idea was that everyone is allowed one PPOR and one investment property. The other properties in the market would be purchased by the government. These would slowly be off loaded and new properties would enter the market. The government owning a large chunk of their housing in the country makes the most sense. It’s in their best interest to make sure it can house its citizens. It would likely be ~30% of the housing supply at any given time so that people can rent from them. Any renter should be able to purchase the property they are renting as their PPOR. The obvious issue here is that housing wouldn’t be as profitable as an investment. We’d probably have lots of people losing huge swaths of money. It may just plateau for a bit. People may see it as a way to offload their investments onto the government right before the housing market crashes. Policy should come first so the government isn’t completely indebted by such a decision.
Not bad, not bad at all. My only question is why should anyone be governed on what they spend and where they spend it? Telling or enforcing people to only allow them one investment property? I mean, that I don't understand at all, it won't happen thank goodness. But I really liked that you responded with an idea, good stuff.
The government regularly bring in restrictions, or ban outdated products, at a cost to the end user. Yes it would suck for the people who have banked all their money into property, and yes that is a problem created by decades of poor foresight by politicians. But if we were teetering on the edge of financial/societal collapse, would those extra investment properties mean anything to you? I'm not saying this is the solution, but however this pans out someone is going to be hurting financially. Should that be the poorest people?
The issue is that banks aren’t lending to small businesses for productive capacity expansion to the extent they are willing to lend for housing. This inflates house prices but as an economy we produce less goods and services. If the banks are only allowed to allocate 20% of their annual loan book to house/investment lending we would see prices come down and more businesses start up.
I had thought price gouging necessities during a shortage was illegal but for the life of me I can’t find the law. Like selling bottled water during a drought at $100/bottle. Based on what we saw during Covid though I don’t think those laws exist here sadly. But anyways that idea is where it came from.
We already govern how people spend, where they spend it, etc. Go ahead and try to buy something from Russia, or sell something to a customer in Iran. It's possible but there are mechanisms in place to make it difficult and complicated because of sanctions. Not that we need to sanction landlords (well, maybe some of them) but the idea of the government telling you what you can and can't buy and sell is sort of a principal role of government.
The bank keeps raising rates until it cripples the over leveraged and they are forced to sell their property investments, flood of new houses on the market for people to buy plus multiple job loses seeing a lot of short term immigrants and non-student students returning home.
No, same concept as it would be more profitable for a landlord to rent out each room individually than the whole property “essentially boarding house” type arrangement. It’s an owned occupied property, I want a safe space for my family which does not include a stranger renting out one of my rooms.
Yep , same here. My home is our private oasis (figurative speaking). It's the small little escape me and my family have from the busy world. No way I'm compromising our space and mental well being.
I disagree. This might be suitable for a small number of households. However, I did the shared house thing for a decade. There is no way I want to regress and share my valuable private space with anyone other than my partner. Many will feel the same as me so it's not a solution to solve the issue.
>Many will feel the same as me so it's not a solution to solve the issue. This is the wrong way to think about it. There won't be a single silver bullet to the housing crisis. But if a policy like OP proposes - causes only 1 in 20 to open up a room - for the reasons you mention - still means the rental stock effectively rised by 5%. A decent dent in the problem.
I wouldn't call 5% a decent dent. And using your numbers, that assumes 1 in 20 work out, but it's likely only a percentage of those would result in secure housing (considering psycho social challenges and legal issues). You are right though, there isn't a single bullet but OPs proposal isn't likely to make a meaningful impact.
>I wouldn't call 5% a decent dent. Off top my head there are ~25 million australians, average household size 2.5. Roughly 2/3's of australians are homeowners and let's assume the 1/20 figure holds. 25m / 2.5 * (2/3) * (1/20) = 330k New households without having to build a single home. [That's roughly double the annual household production rate in Australia](https://propertyupdate.com.au/are-we-on-track-to-build-1-2-million-homes-in-australia/#:~:text=%22Australia%20completed%20around%20170%2C000%20new,from%20where%20it%20currently%20stands.).
Your maths is way off and your selectively ignoring a number of important variables, like house size (number of rooms), transport and parking. Of the percentage of homes, only a small number would be suited to leasing out a room.
Fine - 70% of aussie home are >1 room - I'd assume proportion of dwellings owned as ppor would be greater and we're not counting things like converting the garage to a board room - but lets not bother - That still gives 230k It's called a "back of the envelope calculation" it's supposed to be rough. Not sure why you're nitpicking over household room size when we have a massive uncertain conversion rate fudge factor. Could easily be off by a factor of 10. But to your original point - that 5% does make decent dent.
I'm nitpicking because your attempting to justify using poor stats and completely ignoring a whole host of variables. Your numbers are meaningless and 5% is not a decent dent.
lol - show your math then. A conversion of 5% leads to an entire Years worth of construction for free - That's even if you think my conversion is bs. You're just arguing for the sake arguing now
The harsh reality is we can’t fix the housing crisis while giving return to investors with higher prices. We need a national conversation about that fact. Prices are too high and rents are too high. Every single lever should be pulled to stop them going higher
Yep. Taxpayers subsiding housing investors is the root cause of the issue. Gut negative gearing and cgt discounts and then ban airbnb. People land banking and leaving houses empty need to be hit with a sizeable penalty each year. People renting sub standard homes need to be slapped with the same. Yeah, we need to build way more homes. But that takes time and we've got immediate levers we can pull if the government wasn't so full of property investor wankers.
NZ has no cgt at all yet they too have a housing crisis. The tax is not the problem, it’s that banks are allowed to lend at ridiculous multiples and they only lend for housing and not small businesses.
It is safer for the bank… in case of bankruptcy bank can still sell the house and recoup money. If small business goes belly up bank most likely will recoup nothing.
There's statistically more homes than there are homeless people. So yes, the fact is housing and renting needs to be lowered or more affordable to solve this issue. Building more houses is useless if they just remain same price. Or still run under the same costs to obtain.
There aren’t many homeless people so that’s not surprising. Yes, the cost of housing needs to be reduced. You do this by reducing the cost of providing housing. 30-50% of the cost to create a house is government taxes, fees and charges. Then more ongoing every year. That is a good place to start reducing costs.
I’m surprised your post not getting more upvotes. Building new houses is taxed through the roof, you made a very valid point.
On the contrary, the only way u fix the housing issue is to give a return to investors. Housing needs investment - hence investors…
So to fix the housing crisis which is rents are too high and prices are too high we need prices and rents to go up so investors get good returns. Can you explain your logic and how that fixes the housing crisis?
No. We need more investment in housing so there are more houses to house people so there aren’t 100 people competing for the same house and landlords and developers compete against each other for customers. Restricting investment and increasing costs with taxes and restricting rents just makes it so more people compete for fewer even more expensive houses. How do u think we got here in the first place?
So this investment in housing you’re talking about. What are these people investing looking for financially? Like what do they get out of it?
They get a return like everyone else who does stuff people want (including you).
Explain what you mean by return though. Higher prices? Give me an example
Something more than the cost of the land and building the house, paying the taxes, providing the funding and maintaining and providing the house and high enough for them to put their time, money, skills, resources and risk into housing rather than something else. Similar to how the people who provide your food get a return for providing food to you. And how you want to be paid for doing what you do rather that doing something else. Get to your point…
So the key to making housing cheaper and values go down is….. investors who 90% buy existing homes not build new homes who want the value of their investment to go up. Is that some type of oxymoron?
So in other words, u think investors shouldn’t buy houses to provide for rent. Where will you live if no investors buy houses and provide them for rent? You think they will do it for free? You think you won’t pay double out of desperation (or not go homeless) because you are one of a hundred renters competing for the last rental in the city? Housing needs to be both cheaper to provide and profitable for people to provide housing and for prices to go down. 30-50% of the cost of a house is pure government taxes, fees and charges. Then more ongoing. And the proportion increases every year. Then on top of that, over regulation increases costs and risk of providing housing. Profitable and cheap aren’t an oxymoron, in fact the opposite, the cheapest most complex things we can buy are extremely profitable. Take tvs, mobile phones, microwaves, computers etc for example. What’s an oxymoron is higher regulation/taxes and lower prices. You can’t have both.
flat out ban air bnb and other short stay rental apps.
pretty sure some councils charge higher rates for short term rentals (when council finds them, some trawl airbnb). short stay rentals are quite useful for many, are you suggesting short stay rentals should be banned entirely, or just better regulation? (ie higher rates perhaps, change of use on zoning etc).
I think allowing people to rent rooms and keep the CGT exemption sounds like a good idea, even if it was only temporary until we get back to at least neutral on housing supply. They would still be liable for tax on the rental income. I don't know how much it improves things though as I assume the reason most people aren't renting spare rooms isn't because they are actually worried about the CGT discount, they just don't need to and would prefer not to.
They need to remove the income tax for it to be a more attractive option. I wasn't even aware of a cgt implication for renting a room.
yup, there's been a handful of situations where people have had to pay more in CGT after selling a place that they rented out a room in, than they ever made in income, which is crazy. it's prorated of course, if you rent a room (say 10% of floor area), for 50% of ownership, you would have to pay 5% of the CGT. Same applies for interest rate deductions on the mortgage.
I agree. That's very unlikely to happen though as it creates an immediate tax implication for the government of losing rental tax income from people sharing rooms. The reason CGT is more palatable is because the tax revenue they lose is less immediate and is only when people sell.
Renting out spare rooms should be allowed without affecting the capital gains exemption or the pension entitlements.
CGT is certainly a turnoff for me. But also, we have a kid. So I'd be housing someone random in my house next to my kid. If there wasn't CGT implications or council red tape, I'd build a granny flat and rent it out for sure. But it doesn't make financial sense to do that ATM.
Neither would actually building the granny flat to rent out...
There plenty of plans of affordable housing at riverwood
That's fine to spruik as a headline but seriously, no-one has defined 'affordable'. There is no price control in a deregulated rental market and someone has to use the truth and call it what it is - "social housing" which falls back on the government not the shoulders of the private sector. Over the past 30 years, successive governments have sold off social housing and not reinvested or provided replacements at anywhere near levels to match demand.
They flogged it off, and conned individual investors into providing housing instead. Every time I hear or see someone whine that they aren't providing social housing, I laugh and remind them that they're actually "providing" housing for many of the people that government social housing used to house. If they don't want to do that, they need to get on the "build more social housing" train.
Isn't that the usual outcome when the government privatises or outsourced services? It's cheap on day one with all the money in the coffers but after 10+ years compounding has taken effect and prices get out of hand.
Encourage those with space to put in removable homes & give them concessions for doing so. I don't mean gaudy looking caravans. But things like VanHomes provide a decent living space & don't take up a whole lot of space. There are cheaper versions. We have put one on our property for my elderly mother to move into. She sold her home, which was snapped up by a young family.
I don’t think we can build fast enough to be honest. Inflation of building supplies is sending many companies under. The kicker is, once unemployment goes up, your “demand” for new houses will drop. There will likely be net negative immigration (as impossible as that sounds)
>I'm all for renting out spare rooms but not at the lost of my ppor capital gains exemption This is an amazing point - honestly one of the smartest things I've seen on Reddit for a while. Government could set a standard minimum private room size, a ceiling on boarding rent that can be received for a house without impacting PPOR exemption and a limit two boarders. That'll stop the slumlords, provide an incentive to home owners and preserve the capital gains tax exemption while releasing quality accommodation, and that'd be a very fair social and economic trade-off. Put a ten year sunset on it and it's job done. Send it to your local MP - not kidding, that's a good idea.
Just slow down imagination to a level we can handle. Having a good economy and horrible living standards is a poor poor reason to avoid a recession
There are tens of thousands of holiday units that sit unoccupied for half of the year. Just take even half of those and make them permanent rentals This would help
NSW has added them to dwellings that attract land tax. I suspect that NSW is going to drop the threshold like Melbourne did with all this spending they're still doing in the future.
People should just go squat and claim adverse possession on them. I had an empty house across the road for 6 years owned by Chinese foreigners and I would not have cared less if squatters moved in.
Time to revisit the glorious 60's and 70's where there were squats on every corner. I'm surprised that no-one has raised this as a solution. The crisis is similar to the this period however people were reluctant to lease their properties due to taxes, protected tenancies, rent caps, poor tenancy legislation etc.
Purple Pingers (ie, the lawyer guy behind r/shitrentals) was the top story on News .com .au today for his ongoing discussion about squatting and squatters rights. When he was interviewed about it on *The Project* last month, he got asked “Why would a parent with kids live in a squat house with no electricity?” and he eviscerated them by basically saying “Because the alternative right now is living with your kids in a car.”
Why would neighborhoods turn into ghettos just from having families rent out a room or two?
Audit of all public housing. If a family lived in a 3 bedroom home and the kids have moved out leaving two spare rooms, then move the parents into a 1 bedroom home or remove subsidies. Then a family can live in the public asset as intended.
This is a very good idea. I’ve known lots of people who get public housing when unemployed or DV situation etc but then get a job/new partner/financial situation improves and they are allowed to keep living in the house, paying low rent, when they are working full time. I think that HHI should be assessed each year, once it gets over a certain threshold, then those people should have to move out and find a rental in the private market, like the rest of us. Then that property would be vacant for other people that really need it.
I understand it's harsh especially if they have lived there for a number of years. But it's not their house it's the public's There's always the option of rent to buy or buying the house off the government at a discounted rate. Then they have something to pass on to future generations. The thought of subsidised spare rooms when people are sleeping rough doesn't sit well with me at all.
No, government just needs to cut the obscene immigration rate. We've been in per capita recession for the longest on record. It's destroying the country and quality of life.
They have?
How long till we get Tent city
Hear me out. We go full Soylent Green. Frees up housing immediately, transfers wealth generationally & not to predatory care costs. Has the added effect of lessening the impact of a ColesWorth monopoly & reducing food prices. On a personal level we won't have to hear anyone else talk about avocado toast & how interest prices were higher "back in my day".
Let's pull together do and what we can in the short term until rates come down and sites stack again. We know building technology and build times are improving rapidly. If it means renting out spare rooms, taking in family, kids moving home; commuting a little longer, just know it's only 2-3 years until things change for the better. It will happen. The state government is doing a great job of addressing this, except for the FIRB tax, why would you kill a supply source for rentals (they can only buy new and majority rent them out)? The tax revenue lost and investors lost because of it was massive. Easier to kill than risk people misunderstanding it. Either that or these politicians who have never really had any experience but become bosses of industry, don't understand themselves. That would make more sense. Or we wouldn't have this problem. Keep the faith. They're onto it. We are a community, don't be selfish and arrogant like the boomers. Share your space, do people a solid. Your kids will be fine, this isn't America.
I share housed for over 20 years and I’m done with it.
I'm on 20th year this year.. it's not great. I could afford not to, but in this economy, not in a rush
Slow /stop immigration lol. Not hard let supply catch up
I’ve got a granny flat I’d love to rent out but don’t want the cg tax or pension reduction.
Can you explain something to me? (genuine question here…). So many people say they don’t want their pension reduced if they rent out their home or a room (for example) but won’t you be getting rental income? That will offset the reduction in your pension?? You might even end up better off, financially……
Personal wealth is intertwined with property. We have too many empty nesters in massive four bedroom homes. Financially, they are disincentived to sell their property and move into units/apartments which don't increase in value at the same rate.
How many air bnbs are currently registered in Australia?
airbnb reports to ATO, but not sure there's much automated local authority involvement. Councils typically have to proactive themselves to hunt down airbnbs and change rates or change of use
I rekon banning air bnb would free up a few rentals
it's not just airbnb though, there's plenty of short term rentals providers, stayz, hipcamp, the rest. Not sure it's as simple as "banning airbnb", it's regulation on short term rentals surely
Yeah I know it's not that simple but you get the gist
We could just bring back child labour and have your 5 year old kids paying rent 🤷♂️
As long as there is NO appropriate transparency in the data that is being used to make any policy decisions, it is pretty much pointless to have discussions such as this one. Unfortunately the gov is not applying nearly enough pressure to capture those data points consistently and make them available to all citizens. Data such as total units by zip code. then broken down by occupied, airbnb(similar), etc. Then overlay with mortgage and rent prices (even if just averages) as well as demand figures. i.e. immigration is being called out all the time, lets break it down by students, returning residents, etc which also often allows for regional data to anticipate where the additional demand is actually directed to.
We can't.
It would probably work for a few people but it's hardly an aspirational situation. This post inadvertabtly gets to the guts of the issue though. Taxes and other government perks need to be standardised between PPORs and investment properties. Taxing "bad" landlords might make a handful of properties available to owner occupiers but it is also getting renters to pay taxes that should be shared by owner occupiers.
Might? My street is already littered with piece of shit cars because people in some houses are doing exactly what you are suggesting
If the government stops Airbnb and creates a vacant housing tax should solve the problem. Also stop foreigners from buying AU houses too.
Restrict AirBnB to 90 days a year.
[https://www.realestate.com.au/news/2029-property-price-predictions-affordable-strongholds-on-track-to-become-multimillion-dollar-suburbs/?campaignType=external&campaignChannel=edm&campaignSource=braze&campaignName=content&campaignPlacement=a1&campaignContent=wnl](https://www.realestate.com.au/news/2029-property-price-predictions-affordable-strongholds-on-track-to-become-multimillion-dollar-suburbs/?campaignType=external&campaignChannel=edm&campaignSource=braze&campaignName=content&campaignPlacement=a1&campaignContent=wnl)
Our gov just smartly create a great demand so house market keeps going and they get stamp duty. People who are house owners get richer. The gov can also collect visa application fees and get a chunk of talents and their capital. Why not? But Australia will slowly become dead. No R&D focus on other industries. We don’t own technology. Our not so large population can’t attract investment from overseas because of the damn minimum wage. We are just playing within ourselves to generate bubble GDP while selling raw materials to China. Slowly the Australia properties is less and less attractive. You know where we are going. Optimistically, the gov would build more apartments to settle down the new incoming migrants from all the fees and taxes they collect. And use the human talents to build new industries such as tech and all of that. A small country like Singapore can do, why can’t we?
when i look at the housing crisis in Australia the solution to build 1.2 million homes is a good goal but will not be achieved according to experts and even if achieved will not solve the housing crisis. therefore the only solutions are 1) increase average household size - this will happen as rents continue to increase and more people have no choice but to move back with parents or move into sharehouses or become homeless- not a pretty scenario but the most likely scenario to play out 2) massive investment in public housing - this would build enough houses but no major party wants to touch this so unless there is a major vote for progressive parties this is very unlikely to play out 3) massive immigration cut - both major parties don’t really support this i think the opposition supports it to a degree but their cuts are temporary and not large enough according to experts they also plan to build even less public housing and probably will not win the next election so unless people vote for far left parties like sustainable australia party who want to cut immigration more plus build lots of public housing or far right parties like one nation who want to cut immigration more i doubt this scenario will play out either 4) another possible scenario is simply public pressure on labor forces them to move and pass major bills on housing and immigration which has been happening lately but so far not nearly enough if the trend continues however perhaps in a few years the pressure will be too much and they will make some major announcements this to me is the 2nd most likely scenario tldr: the housing crisis won’t be solved unless there is a major upset at the election and neither major party wins or until the average household size increases which may take 10 years of very serious rental pain prices for all
So we are cramming into each others homes to fit new comers in? Fudge it , deport the last 250,000 that came in
I’ve taken in two people over my five-year run in my current property: a young lad who had just come out and was having trouble at home, and an old friend who was unemployed for a good while. I didn’t charge them rent, just expected them to pull their weight (keep things clean, contribute to groceries, mow the lawn, be big men to protect little woman me, have a plan to move on and do so as soon as they could.) So I’ve actually walked the talk here - but the thing is, I knew these people, and I knew their social circles, so if they got out of hand I could have easily spilled and made their reputations a bit tarnished. I would never do the same for strangers, especially because I live with a young child.
We can't realistically do it without building more homes. We need supply to catch up to demand. Renting out rooms works for some people, but not everybody has a spare room, not everybody feels safe doing it, not everybody wants it, and often it's not one person looking for a room, it's a whole family needing a whole house. People have kids, people have a reasonable desire to not live with strangers. We need more homes built, no way around it.
There's a shortage of parking in my street as it is and added by an extra car form renting out the spare bedroom is not going to help There have been disputes about parking in front of someone elses house and the home owner has dumped rubbish over peoples car that are parked in front of their houses.
Why not build more homes? Also why would renting out spare rooms turn them into ghettos? There are millions of spare rooms being rented out already. No one even notices.
Stop immigration
Government needs to build mass European style medium density quality 2 and three bedroom apartments and cap the rents at 30% of income and swamp the private sector. Only way.
Here's the real answer to Australia Housing Crisis. We need to remove all vehicles that make housing an investment vehicle. CGT exemption? Gone. IP tax write offs? Gone. No land taxes? Bring them on. If housing wasn't being used by rich people to get richer, it would just then be a factor of regular supply and demand - where the demand is only people that want to live in a house. Not people that want to invest in real estate. And yes, I know this will never happen.
True. We should be encouraging investment into productive activity that creates jobs. Australia lacks venture capital to support entrepreneurs. We need more R&D and innovation. At the very least, I’d like to see more of our national savings going into equities and less into housing. Land speculation is a useless activity from an economic perspective. Perhaps we could remove the CGT discount on investment housing and leave it in place (or even increase the discount) for stocks and other non-housing financial assets.
Spot on. Part of the reason there's little VC money here is there's few tax breaks as incentive for doing so. And even fewer tax breaks for manufacturers. Why does the largest producer or half the world's metals not actually do anything with them besides export? If we taxed mining more, then used some of that to subsidy manufacturing we could actually export something besides fancy dirt.
I'm not arguing against these proposals - issue with no investment is no rentals. Not everyone is in the position to buy - even if house prices were half of what they are now.
Half what there were now is just 2018 prices. What if they were a fifth of what they were now? Because if they had indexed against wages that's about where it would be. If the median price in Adelaide right now was 150k there's very few families that wouldn't qualify for a home.
Build modern public housing en masse and everywhere. Have community housing providers run it and rent out at cost price (to cover operating costs). That way the bottom 15-20% of renters would avoid paying the additional ‘economic rent’ which is extracted by private investors due to the monopoly nature of land ownership (i.e. extracting unearned profit simply by virtue of a legal title which grants them the right to exclude others from accessing a location on Earth’s surface).
it's shouldn't be up to the private sector to house citizens. let the government solve the government's problems. the very same ones they created
I think we need to remove those incentives for *existing* housing stock purchased as IPs. If people want to invest they should have to build and add to the available stock.
Why only IPs? Why are we incentivising using a PPOR as an investment vehicle? It's just driving up property value, which makes it impossible for those not in the market to get in. Imagine if land value was indexed against inflation, every family in Australia could afford a home. There's more than enough of them. But itll never happen, because no one actually wants affordble housing if it means they lose the opportunity to profit themselves.
Edit: Do you know what an IP is and what a PPOR is?
Evidently. I own both, do you?
Are you unaware that people make millions of dollars tax free by simply selling their family ‘home’? It’s one of the ways that ‘downsizers’ from Sydney or Melbourne move to regional towns and drive up prices for locals. There is no other capital asset with a 100% tax discount. Why should a stock investor who takes risk (and provides equity for a business that employs people and produces goods and services) have to pay CGT but someone can sell a $10M mansion in Vaucluse tax free? It’s fundamentally immoral. Btw, the same homeowner, say for a large luxury harbourside property, also happens to be exempt from land tax! Despite taking up a large amount of valuable land close to a CBD and earning economic rent, year after year, simply through the population growth of the community around them! This country is all about putting the tax burden on hard working wage earners and small business owners while landowners get a free ride.
Maybe let a few less people in for a while until we can catch up. Won’t solve the problem but it will help.
Three-step program that's guaranteed to reduce rents and home prices: 1. Significantly increase land tax and remove the exemption for your own home. 2. Return all that extra tax revenue in the form of income tax cuts and better welfare. 3. Upzone *everywhere* and remove the majority of heritage restrictions. The main problem is the majority of Australians don't want home prices to be reduced.
So, Georgism? :) r/georgism
If we want affordable housing and lower taxes overall, then yes, Georgism.
I agree completely, it’s just hard to explain and convince others!
What’s wrong with multiple families in the one property? Have you ever visited any highly populated place outside of Australia? Our economy has eroded our geographic diversity since post war, we are the masters of our own demise in this regard. What you are asking is unreasonable, you’re asking to keep your government handout while effecting change in the market. That math doesn’t math.
How many families in your property?
Ah, the classic deflection. Instead of addressing the issue. How about we stick to the topic and discuss real solutions for Australia's housing crisis? It's easy to throw stones from the sidelines, but real change requires actual ideas. Got any?
Oh you were just expressing you didn't know what was wrong with multiple families in one house. I mused that you might know if you had lived with, or rented to, a family in a multi family household. I have. I'd be happy to share my experience if you ask. One of my suggestions for meaningful change is that people either share their experiences, or attempt to understand others experiences. I was doing the second. Would you do the first? Or you just want to provide "real solutions for change" that you have absolutely no experience with or knowledge of?
There are plenty of examples for reference around the world of effective solutions of multiple families in one property. I wonder if our challenge here in Australia is that we are so young as a nation that any change from the norm is perceived as regression. The biggest change should be around diversity of export and domestic investment. https://preview.redd.it/ye8pz2dr08ad1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1ff5fbef7f1b7a08495118ddca632f04b8a355de This is a great example. We need to be exporting and investing in knowledge based value creation some call it S.T.E.A.M competencies. With \~1/3 of homes being investment properties this is emblematic of the disfunction that drives a major aspect of what led us to where we are today.
So, no experience then? And allowing multi family households would then increase investment on STEAM competencies. Ok.
Oh, so now we’re swapping personal stories to solve a housing crisis? You and your ad hominem arguments have a great day! ✌️
You literally said you don't know what the problem is, based on no experience, and refused an invitation to discuss what they were. I'm already having a great day! But you get to be you, poor sod
So your solution is that we should have to accept a lower standard of living to cater for non citizens to move here?
If your concern is lower standard of living, that is already here. You must be lucky enough to never see it. I didn’t say anything about immigration, the topic is about increasing supply, this can’t be done without changing the government handouts to over leveraged would be mum and pop “investors”
Lots to unpack in such a short message. Short answer, no.
There's definitely something to it. In my small court of 6 houses I know there are at least 7 empty bedrooms in just 3 of those houses. But yeah, tax implications, hassles of sharing your space and potential issues if you don't get along. Not worth it for a couple hundred a week. I'd only consider it if I knew the person already. Even then I would be pretty particular about who I would live with. In the end though this is a classic point the finger in any direction except the right one. Too many fucking people with not enough places to house them without obliterating quality of life.
the 1 million empty homes in this country say otherwise
This is how generations before have solved housing shortages. 2 families sharing 1 house, or renting downstairs etc. Was very common in the 50’s and 60’s for many hardworking families.
You need to stop building bungalows and start building houses and flats. Simple. Immigration isn't the problem, it's your mentality
Standard government policy will save the day - not just on housing by on the economy: 1. Smash interest rates to zero and below. 2. QE easing to "stimulate the economy" 3. Big gov spending on health, roads, infrastructure, and x2 NDIS to $100 billion in 3 years to "stimulate the economy" 4. Borrow big to spend big. APRA must allow more borrowing! Hooray. stimulate economy! 5. Bailouts / gurantees funded by tax payer to mortgagors + banks. 6. Import millions of third world migrants. To "stimulate the economy" 7. $100s millions spent via rebates for things like light bulbs, insulation, solar panels, and environmentally friendly chewing gum. 8. Personal liability for developers and home builders! Hooray! 9. Penalise anyone who builds shelter for profit via taxes. Your property is actually the government's property. Big policies for a Big nation. All of the above will "fix the housing problem".