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
Peter Costello says RBA 'irresponsible' on rates, but who is responsible for housing affordability?
Alan Kohler ABC (No paywall)Former Treasurer Peter Costello has labelled the Reserve Bank of Australia "irresponsible" for stating it would keep interest rates where they are until 2024. ... While the RBA has now dropped that wording, the central bank is saying it is "plausible" that rates will stay where they are until 2024. Mr Costello made the comments on 7.30 in an interview on Australia's skyrocketing property market, a boom that has seen house prices increase 22 per cent in 12 months. ... However, for his part, Mr Costello defended his decision in 1999 to introduce a 50 per cent discount to capital gains tax, which many analysts believe is also partly responsible for the housing affordability crisis. In its submission to an ongoing Parliamentary inquiry into housing affordability, the NSW Government singled out the tax — which provides a major tax break for those selling properties they have owned for 12 months or more — as being a part of the housing affordability problem. "These tax benefits of property investment have contributed to the growing housing affordability issue," the NSW Government said in its submission. ... Professor Emma Baker, housing researcher at the University of Adelaide, said that the housing affordability crisis was "actually a crisis of our own making". "I think we can put that down to the fact that we have no plan for housing in Australia," she said. "We don't deal with housing as a system. We respond in piecemeal ways." ... Also, it would help if conditions were better for tenants so that families were willing to keep renting rather than wanting to buy, by lengthening lease terms, allowing pets and generally tilting the playing field in favour of tenants. "At the moment we have a rental sector where it's designed as a transition tenure, on the assumption that people eventually make it into home ownership," Professor Baker said. "So why not look at the rental sector and say, 'How can we make this the kind of tenure that you want to live in for your whole life?' Let's increase the average lease length from 12 months and put some minimum standards in. Let's make the rental sector feel like a place that you can live".
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-23/peter-costello-says-rba-i…
# Australia, Rent, Federal Government, Home, Home ownership, Housing affordability, Housing market, No-grounds evictions, State Government.Canterbury renter wins at Tenancy Tribunal: Landlord jacks up the rent
Ben Leahy (No paywall)From New Zealand ... A Canterbury tenant has accused his landlord of jacking up his rent by $60 a week as retaliation for winning a $1000 payout at the Tenancy Tribunal. Luke Dyer said the increase comes just four months after his tribunal win in July. The increase is also less than 12 months after he signed a fixed-term tenancy and set rental price for his Rangiora house. He said the case highlighted why tenants often felt intimidated or like it wasn't worth the trouble to take their landlords to the Tenancy Tribunal. (New Zealand Herald)
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/canterbury-renter-wins-at-tenancy-…
# International, Rent, Tribunal NCAT.Home truths: the housing emergency must shift Australian politics
Duncan Maclennan Pearls and Irritations (No paywall)The failures of Australia’s fragmented and ineffective housing policy are accumulating — governments should take heed or pay a political cost. ... Housing policy has been at best fragmented and inadequate, and at worst inactive or counterproductive. Our new evidence demonstrates the economic damage that arises from the consequent housing outcomes by raising inequalities of wealth and income, hampering productivity and exacerbating potential economic and financial instabilities.
https://johnmenadue.com/why-housing-emergency-must-shift-austral…
# Australia, Public and community housing, Rent, Federal Government, Home ownership, Homelessness, Housing affordability, Landlords and agents.Broome pushes forward with plan to regulate Airbnb and other short-term rental properties
Vanessa Mills ABC (No paywall)Home owners in one of Western Australia's prime tourist destinations wanting to rent their properties to travellers will soon have to apply for permission from their local council. The Shire of Broome has formalised its stance on short-term rentals, which have boomed in popularity through platforms like Airbnb and Stayz. The shire will soon require home owners to apply for their property to be listed as a holiday house if it is in a suburban area and the owner is not residing there.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-20/tighter-rules-for-airbnb-…
# Australia, Housing market, Local Government, Short-term holiday letting.NSW inquiry told three more Icon-built Sydney projects under investigation for alleged defects
Kathleen Calderwood ABC (No paywall)A NSW parliamentary inquiry has heard the state's building commissioner is investigating defects in three other apartment blocks constructed by the builder behind the beleaguered Opal Tower. Mr Chandler said he was investigating defects in Lindfield Village at 23-41 Lindfield Avenue, the Avantra Apartments at 659-669 Gardeners Road, Mascot, and another apartment block at 1-31 Victoria Street in Roseville. "We are currently in the process of applying post-occupation certificate audits on these three projects," Mr Chandler told the committee. "In the event the defects are confirmed — and I've been out and had a look at these, and I have to tell you that I expect they will be— there will be orders placed on the developers of those projects because the [Residential Apartment Buildings] Act goes to the developer who engaged Icon." Also, check out Matt O'Sullivan's story entitled "‘More names than Scarlet Pimpernel’: Opal Tower builder under fire over other projects" in 'The Sydney Morning Herald' at: [https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/more-names-than-scarlet-pimpernel-opal-tower-builder-under-fire-over-other-projects-20211122-p59b0n.html].
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-22/nsw-inquiry-told-three-mo…
# NSW, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards.The Bank of Mum and Dad is allowing New Zealand’s wealthy to become ‘opportunity hoarders’
Max Rashbrooke The Guardian (No paywall)n the last few decades, an apparently ordinary financial institution has assumed an importance that could hardly have been foreseen. It is not a finance company, a payday lender or even a crypto-currency. It is, rather, the Bank of Mum and Dad. Barely a day goes by without a media story about the struggles of young people to afford a first home, and their experience is rarely free from some kind of parental influence. Even the young grafters who have supposedly pulled themselves up by the bootstraps into homeownership often turn out to have lived rent-free with their parents or received some other kind of family support. Even more often, of course, they have simply relied on a large deposit from mum and dad. ... This is just one sign among many that, contrary to the idea of a classless New Zealand, we live in a country with entrenched social differences.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2021/nov/22/the-…
# International, Families, Housing market.‘Twilight’ for Australia’s housing boom as prices to fall 10% in 2023, CBA says
Peter Hannam The Guardian (No paywall)Australia’s “red hot” property market has started to cool, with prices to peak next year and sink 10% in 2023 as higher borrowing costs and “natural fatigue” set in, the nation’s largest mortgage lender predicts. Home prices in Sydney, which will post among the fastest gains in 2021 with a forecast 27% jump, will moderate to a 6% advance in 2022, according to Gareth Aird, head of Australian economics for the Commonwealth Bank. By 2023, though, the harbour city’s prices will fall 12%, the equal most of any capital city, matching Hobart’s predicted retreat.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/22/twilight-…
# Australia, Housing market.All new homes must have car charging points from next year under government plans
James Wilmore Inside Housing (Paywall)From the United Kingdom ... New homes will be legally required to have electric vehicle (EV) charging points from next year, according to an announcement from Boris Johnson. Under the plans, existing building regulations will be altered to require every new home, including flats and dwellings created from a change of use, to have EV charging point infrastructure. This will mean that there will need to be “at least” one charging point per dwelling with “associated parking”. In addition, residential buildings undergoing major renovation with more than 10 parking spaces will need to have at least one electric vehicle charge point for each dwelling with associated parking. And all new and existing non-residential buildings must also have EV charging points under the new laws. The government has estimated that the new regulations, outlined in a delayed response to a Department for Transport (DfT) consultation, will mean that an extra 145,000 charging points are installed in England each year as part of its wider plan to cut carbon emissions.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/all-new-homes-must-hav…
# International, Climate change, Housing market.