The Real Estate Institute of NSW (REINSW) said a brutal action plan is required to address the “housing catastrophe” across Australia.
The growing disparity between skyrocketing housing demand and a lack of supply prompted the real estate body to call for an immediate and genuine inquiry – one that will be focused on the “inhibitors” of housing supply.
“The inhibitors are things like the council taking forever for approvals,” REINSW CEO Tim McKibbin told The Daily Telegraph. “It can regularly take over 12 months for a council to give an approval for a development and the actual building of it can be less than that.
“The other thing that happens is the council will be persuaded by that local politics and refuse the development even if it is a good development for the area. The developer then has to go to the Land and Environment Court which becomes the consent authority.”
McKibbin said councils should have the power to “declare their hand” and advertise what investment is needed in the area, to expedite the processing of the right developments.
Another problem, he said, was that more than 40% of the costs paid by consumers for new property were for government taxes and charges.
“The whole tax system needs to come onto the table and we need to be ensuring that the tax burden is spread throughout the economy and not dumped on property transactions,” McKibbin said.
He said property transactions were a “soft target” as people needed a roof over their heads.
“You’ve got a supply-and-demand issue and the demand is amongst people that must buy,” McKibbin said. “In any market like that, prices go through the roof. What we have seen repeatedly over the last two years is a focus on the symptoms of the problem and not the problems.”
He cited the ban on rent bidding as a classic example, saying the measure did not solve the problem of not having enough property.
REINSW welcomed further support for first-home buyers under the Home Guarantee Scheme.
The industry body noted, however, that the move, along with the anticipated arrival of 400,000 migrants over the next year, underlined the urgency for an action plan, The Daily Telegraph reported.
“These demand-side impacts need to be balanced by supply-side solutions,” McKibbin said.
“Every aspiring first homeowner and everyone who arrives on our shores needs and deserves a home, but these homes simply aren’t available.
“Higher house prices and rents are an unavoidable market consequence of a housing shortfall, and without more social and affordable housing, increased homelessness is a catastrophic social consequence.”
Use the comment section below to tell us how you felt about this.
