Housing News Digest
Housing News Digest
The Tenants' Union Housing News Digest compiles our pick of items from all the latest tenancy and housing media, sent once per week, on Thursdays.
Below is the Digest archive from November 2020 onwards. From time to time you will find additional items in the archive that did not make it into the weekly Digest email. Earlier archives are here, where you can also find additional digests by other organisations.
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Archive
Western Australia's rental squeeze making it near impossible to attract enough workers
Rebecca Turner ABC (No paywall)Western Australia has found itself starving for workers and hungry for homes for them to live in, just over six months after opening its borders to the world. In what appears a cruel irony, Western Australia is particularly desperate for construction workers — the very carpenters, plumbers and painters needed to build the homes to house in-demand workers for the industry. So, how do you get more homes if you do not have the workers to build them? How do you attract workers from interstate or overseas if fewer than one in 100 rental properties in Perth is vacant? These questions illustrate the exquisite dilemma that Western Australia — with the lowest unemployment rate in the nation and a tight housing market — faces.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-28/housing-rental-squeeze-co…
# Australia, Rent, Housing market, Work, employment.Real estate agents say granny flat rentals push has tax implications, won’t ease Queensland housing crisis
Chloe Chomicki ABC (No paywall)The Queensland government's bid to ease housing pressure by allowing owners to put granny flats up for rent could have tax implications and would do little to relieve the market, industry representatives say.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-28/granny-flat-rentals-wont-…
# Australia, Rent, Granny flats, studios, Housing market, Landlords and agents, Tax.Developer levy changes scrapped after pressure from local councils
Michael Koziol The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)The NSW government has dumped a suite of contentious changes to developer levies recommended by the Productivity Commission, avoiding a protracted fight with local councils including Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore ahead of the state election. The reforms – which the government initially said would fix a broken system and unlock up to $12 billion in productivity benefits over 20 years – concerned contributions paid by landowners and developers for public infrastructure such as roads, parks and utilities.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/developer-levy-changes-scrap…
# NSW, Local Government, Planning and development.What if we championed housing like Cerdà’s Barcelona, Haussmann’s Paris, or Belgravia in London
Chris Johnson The Fifth Estate (No paywall)The recent 2022 Demographia report of housing affordability across 92 cities listed Sydney as the second least affordable city after Hong Kong. The report measures how many years of average income are needed to purchase an average home with anything over five years as being severely unaffordable. Sydney sits the second worse at 15.3 years with London at eight years and New York at 7.1 years. Housing supply in Sydney is down and clearly something needs to be done to get more homes built.
https://thefifthestate.com.au/innovation/residential-2/what-if-w…
# NSW, Affordable housing, Housing market, Sydney.‘Don’t buy lemons any more’: Three top property developers win gold star ratings
Sue Williams Domain (No paywall)People who buy a defect-ridden apartment in future will only have themselves to blame, NSW Building Commissioner David Chandler has declared while revealing the first three developers to be awarded gold stars under his new rating system. And would-be developers with little more than a $2 company, a ute and a mobile phone will no longer be able to gamble with millions of dollars of buyers’ money.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/don-t-buy-lemons-any-more-t…
# NSW, Housing market, Landlords and agents, Minimum habitability standards.The home buyers with a pathway to cut energy bills by 20 per cent
Kate Burke Domain (No paywall)Many homeowners would like to make sustainable upgrades to their property, but even simple sounding switches can become complex and costly when they have not been planned for. It will be a different story for residents of a new hybrid development on Sydney’s north shore, though, where infrastructure is being put in place to make sustainable swaps simpler as demand for electric living grows.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/the-home-buyers-with-a-path…
# NSW, Utilities electricity water gas, Minimum habitability standards.How to fast-track strata conflict resolution
Jimmy Thomson (No paywall)It is generally accepted that our states’ strata dispute systems are slow, frustrating and expensive – but isn’t there a way to provide instant answers before issues become serious problems. ... Recently in the Flat Chat podcast we suggested a fast-track, first stage dispute resolution system for strata owners and residents. We’re calling it the Strata Panel. It might look like a mixture of speed dating and Judge Judy but it’s a serious suggestion based on the idea of letting people who have lived in or worked in strata communities, and who understand strata law, decide how disputes should be resolved.
# Australia, Strata, Tribunal NCAT.Residential rental listings plunge as landlords sell up
Nila Sweeney (Paywall)Property investors Peter Meek and Joanna Meek are selling two of their Queensland rental properties to avoid the new land tax rule. "With all the tenancy reforms happening in Queensland and with the land tax rule, it has become very difficult to be a landlord,” he said.
https://www.afr.com/property/residential/residential-rental-list…
# Australia, Rent, Landlords and agents, Tax.