Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Tag: Rental affordability

Western Australia To Offer Airbnb Owners $10,000 To Rent To Long-Term Tenants

Short-term accommodation owners in Western Australia will be offered a $10,000 incentive to rent their properties to long-term tenants to boost housing supply.

Airbnb owners and other short-term rental accommodation providers will be offered nation-leading incentives of $10,000 to make their properties available to long-term tenants in Western Australia.

The scheme is part of a slew of changes introduced by the Labor government to boost housing supply and regulate the growing short-term rental market.

Community groups say the strategy could double the state’s rental housing supply.
Read the original article at theguardian.com

Australia Sleepwalks Into Calamitous Rental Crisis

The rental market in Australia has completely gone mad.

According to the most recent rental vacancy statistics from CoreLogic, PropTrack and SQM Research, Australia’s capital city vacancy rate fell to an all-time low of around 1.0% in September, with every market in Australia suffering exceptional tightness

The scarcity of available rental properties has pushed rental inflation to its highest level in decades, with PropTrack recording 12.2% growth in capital city rents in the year to September, driven by 18.2% growth in Sydney, 14.9% growth in Perth, and 13.6% growth in Melbourne

More social and affordable housing is the only solution to Australia’s rental crisis

A boost in social housing benefits everyone – people in housing stress get the homes they need and building new homes creates jobs and opportunities

For the first time, Australia is entering the new year with a prime minister who grew up in social housing.

Yet as Australians face a rise in living costs, soaring rents, and crashing vacancy rates, we are also bidding farewell to a key housing affordability measure.

The National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) was designed to help working people who had been priced out of renting, allowing them to create a stable home for themselves and their family.

The scheme wasn’t perfect – it was based on incentives and payments to landlords – but its end will mean thousands of affordable homes will disappear with no plan for the people who were living in them. Renters leaving the scheme will enter a rental market with record low vacancy rates. Data released this week shows a 10% surge in rent prices across capital cities. Many won’t be eligible for social housing, and those who are will find that waiting lists are years long.

Housing Affordability: Would a Foreign Buyer Ban Make a Difference?

While home values have steadily retreated from their pandemic peak in recent months, they remain at near-record highs, posing an ongoing challenge for many Australians who want to own their own home.

In the September quarter of last year the national average home price sat at $889,800, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows – 33% higher than in September 2019 ($668,800).

Joey Moloney, a senior associate at the Grattan Institute, says that the affordability of housing in Australia has been deteriorating for years though.

Read the full article at Money Magazine

Australian Property Forecast: What’s In Store For 2023?

The property market took a hit in 2022 as mortgage rates started to increase much faster than initially expected, rising eight times to end the year at 3.1%. To put this into context, the cash rate was sitting at just 0.1% at the beginning of 2022.

“I think what we saw in 2022 was a bit of a roller coaster really in terms of property prices in the property market because we started the year with record prices and then moved into a downturn quite rapidly,” chief of research and economics at Domain, Nicola Powell, told ForbesAdvisor.

Earlier in 2021 the RBA governor, Phillip Lowe, had said that it would not be raising rates until 2024—a comment Lowe has since stepped back from and apologised to borrowers who took out heft loans on the basis of his erroneous advice.

“The RBA kept on insisting that they wouldn’t lift rates until 2024. Now we were skeptical that they could keep to that promise,” SQM Research owner and managing director, Louis Christopher, added.

In 2023 property experts are cautiously optimistic that as interest rates plateau that stability will return to the market. Here’s what we may expect to see…

Read the original article at forbes.com

How housing made rich Australians 50 per cent richer, leaving renters and the young behind

How housing made rich Australians 50 per cent richer, leaving renters and the young behind — and how to fix it

Compared to the rest of the world, income inequality is not particularly high in Australia, nor is it getting much worse — until you include housing.

Rising housing costs have dramatically widened the gap between what Australians on high and low incomes can afford. Rising home prices paired with plummeting rates of home-ownership are driving up wealth inequalities.

If we want to address inequality, we will have to fix housing.

Key points:

  • Housing is draining the incomes of the poor
  • Housing is driving wealth inequality
  • Housing is driving up capital income
  • Housing is creating a “Jane Austen world”
  • The Federal Government needs to fix taxation
  • Australia needs to build more houses

Read the original article at The Conversation

A tsunami of homelessness is about to hit

Rising rents, eight interest rate hikes, surging living costs and natural disasters inflamed what was already among world’s least affordable rental markets Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese has announced.

Belinda has applied for more than 100 rental homes in the past year and been rejected every time.

The 39-year-old Australian single mother of four now lives in a temporary shelter in Campbelltown, southwest of Sydney, and has six months to find a home that costs under 500 Australian dollars a week, or risk ending up sleeping rough.

“I don’t know where I’m supposed to go after that. I have got a house full of furniture that I don’t really want to get rid of. I don’t really want to get rid of my cat or my puppy,” says Belinda. “It is a bit scary to tell you the truth.”

Relentlessly rising rents, eight consecutive interest rate hikes, surging living costs and devastating natural disasters in the past few years have inflamed what was already among the world’s least affordable rental markets.

Zoned Out: How Land Use Restrictions Divide The Nation

Housing policies ensure continual wealth gains for current home owners while leaving renters and potential buyers locked out of the market.

Housing policy is a battle between the haves and the have-nots. The haves are the current generation of wealthy home owners. They have enjoyed large capital gains over the past few decades and are sitting on property worth hundreds of thousands – often millions – of dollars. They support the policies that have delivered these windfalls.

The have-nots are renters and future generations of potential home owners. These groups are disproportionately young and on lower incomes.

Read the full article on John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations

Australian house rentals smash new records

Australia’s rental market is heating up in a big way, with new data showing rental houses across the nation’s capital cities have witnessed a 3.4 per cent price increase over the final quarter of 2021.

According to Domain’s latest Quarterly Rent Report, this stark rise equates to a new set of record high prices in Australia.

It also means that 2021’s rental housing market witnessed an annual price growth of 7.4 per cent – the biggest yearly increase since 2009.

Melbourne could soon become the cheapest city for renters

…while Canberra remains the most expensive

House rents have hit record highs in every capital city in Australia except Melbourne, Perth and Darwin.

But for the first time on record, Melbourne has become the second-most-affordable capital city in Australia in which to rent a house, equal with Perth and behind Adelaide.

Melbourne could become the most affordable city in the country in which to rent a house and unit this year, if present trends continue.

Read the full article at www.abc.net.au