Housing Strategy
Market Security Regulations
Intro to MSR
The proposals below are standalone options that have been proposed or employed elsewhere as solutions to problems that can cause harmful market distortions. Their inclusion on this page does not necessarily suggest that the problems they target are significant in Australia, only that these can be used to improve the resilience of our housing market.
Restrict Foreign Ownership
Proposal: Require property owned by overseas buyers and temporary visa holders to be occupied for a minimum of 22 months in 24 unless they are an Australian resident for tax purposes. Failure to maintain this would result in the property being repossessed.
(Alternatively, in the event of a land tax, simply disallow any tax discounts for properties that are foreign-owned.)
Justification: People who don't live in Australia don't need to own housing in Australia and there should be no barrier to temporary visa holders simply renting. Many of our regional neighbours have sensible legislation designed to stop overseas investors distorting their housing markets to the detriment of locals and adopting policies more like them in this regard improves legal alignment and makes our relatively small housing market more robust.
"Ghost neighbourhoods" have become a problem in many housing markets around the world where overseas investors have been allowed to buy in large numbers because they are often just parking their money in foreign real estate and don't want the hassle of managing a rental property - but this artificially restricts the supply of housing available to renters and pushes prices up.
Based on data collected at the last census and research by the group Prosper Australia, there are enough of these deliberately empty investment properties to house every homeless person in the country and every person on a public housing waiting list - and foreign ownership is a component of the reasoning for this.
If these were made available for people to live in, then house prices and rents would more appropriately reflect local market conditions.
White Collar Crime Prevention
Proposal: Subject bankers, real estate agents, lawyers, accountants and other associated professionals with roles in the property sector to the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism Financing Act 2006 to stamp out money laundering by organised crime in Australia's real estate market.
Justification: Our international allies have been urging Australia for years to close this loophole. Currently there exists an unmeasured potential which allows Australia to profit from overseas crime that we do not bear the impact of.
Regulation of AirBnB Style Properties
Proposal: Properties listed for AirBnB or similar commercial services to be re-classified as non-residential or partially-residential (for subjection to land tax). As such they would not be exempt from the Land Tax discount for principal place of residence, cannot be negatively geared, and may be subject to CGT if sold unless converted back to residential for one full financial year prior to sale.
Justification: When property investors are allowed to "Airbnb" out entire properties full time that they never live in like an unlicensed hostel or hotel they can earn many, many times what they would from normal rental income but this is to the detriment of people in their community who need an affordable place to live.
National Renters Rights
Proposal: Place into the remit of the National Housing Strategy body [link] the issue of incentivising states to either cede authority to a national governing body, or otherwise conform with each other, according to best state practices determined by the strategic body.
Best state practices to include consideration of:
an end to “no fault” evictions.
longer and more stable leases.
Justification: Australian renters have extremely few rights compared to people from other countries where leases are often much longer and people have much greater security from being evicted without good reason. National consistency across the states and territories also has significant occupational and residential mobility benefits.