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
Paris court fines Airbnb $9.6 million for illegal listings
Romain Dillet(No paywall)
A court in Paris has fined Airbnb, the popular marketplace for vacation rentals. According to the court, the tech company has failed to comply with local regulation when it comes to listing your apartment on the platform. Airbnb should pay $9.6 million (€8.08 million) to the city of Paris. This decision has been years in the making. Like many major cities around the world, Airbnb has had some impact on the housing market in Paris. Many apartments disappeared from the housing market as they became full-time Airbnb apartments, leading to high rents. (TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/01/paris-court-fines-airbnb-9-6-m…
# International, Rent, Housing market, Short-term holiday letting.Chinese foreign investors have cooled on Australian properties, but overseas buyers are tipped to return
Nssim KhademABC (No paywall)
Chinese foreign investors who abandoned the Australian property market last financial year could soon return, according to real estate agents and analysts who say enquiries and sales are on the rise. But they predict Australian property is likely to be a more attractive option for overseas buyers who want to move here and buy land or large homes when our borders reopen, rather than foreign investors who face high taxes.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-02/chinese-overseas-buyers-a…
# Australia, Rent, Home ownership, Housing market, Landlords and agents.Australia’s housing FOMO is more contagious than COVID
Elizabeth KnightThe Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)
Regulators haven’t yet started to roll out a vaccine for Australia’s other pandemic - the highly infectious fear of missing out on property ownership - which has resulted in annual price growth more rapid than anything seen in almost two decades. The most infectious variant is house ownership ...
https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/australia-s-…
# Australia, Home ownership, Housing market.Public housing residents relocated under Victorian government program fear uncertainty
Ahmed YussufABC (No paywall)
Hadia Komba spends almost four hours each day travelling from her new home in Werribee to get her kids to and from school in Flemington. She recently took the option to relocate her family of seven, including her five children, out of their three-bedroom public housing flat to a four-bedroom house. ... They were moved to Werribee as part of the Victorian government's $31.7 million tower relocation program. The voluntary program was offered to 420 high-rise public housing tenants assessed as being at greatest risk from coronavirus.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-04/melbourne-public-housing-…
# Australia, Public and community housing, Coronavirus COVID-19, State Government.Housing Ombudsman publishes full details of 350 decisions against landlords
Tim ClarkInside Housing (Paywall)
From the United Kingdom ... In a bid to increase transparency, the ombudsman has published more than 350 individual cases covering a range of issues including repairs, anti-social behaviour and complaint-handling. The outcomes included areas where the ombudsman found cases of maladministration, no issue and those where an incident had gone wrong but the landlord was not deemed not to have addressed it appropriately. According to the ombudsman, the decisions provide an ever-expanding resource to promote learning, fairness and accountability in the sector. The cases cover dozens of landlords and include details of incidents where housing associations have been forced to pay tenants for inadequately responding to anti-social behaviour claims, failing to deal with leaks in properties and removing gas pipes without informing residents.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/housing-ombudsman-publishes…
# International, Public and community housing, Rent, Landlords and agents.Is the UK housing bubble about to burst? These are the best and worst scenarios
Josh Ryan-CollinsThe Guardian (No paywall)
UK house prices appear to have defied economic gravity over the past year. The lockdowns triggered by the pandemic led to a 10% fall in GDP, the largest fall in 300 years, since the Great Frost of 1709. Yet the latest data shows house prices have grown at the fastest annual rate – 13.4% – in 17 years. Are we in the midst of another housing bubble?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/02/housing-bu…
# International, Housing market.‘Wall of high-rise buildings’: Plans for 45-storey towers at Blackwattle Bay
Megan GorreyThe Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)
The Berejiklian government’s plans to build 1500 apartments in towers up to 45 storeys at Blackwattle Bay would create a wall of high-rise buildings close to the foreshore, according to residents and the City of Sydney council.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/wall-of-high-rise-buildings-…
# NSW, Housing market, Local Government, Planning and development, State Government.Couple to be forced out Moama holiday park under NSW legislation
Anna McGuinness(Paywall)
An elderly couple will soon be left homeless, with red tape due to force Bruce and Maureen Costall out of the Moama holiday park they have called home for six months. For 15 years, the dual Australian and Canadian citizens have split their time between the countries, spending Australian summers in their unit at Murray River Holiday Park. In March last year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Air Canada cancelled their flight back to Canada, which had been booked for May. Under the NSW Holiday Parks Act, the couple is only permitted to spend 180 days at the park in a 12-month period. (Riverine Herald)
https://www.riverineherald.com.au/news/2021/06/24/4509806/couple…
# NSW, Eviction, Land lease communities, Coronavirus COVID-19, Regional NSW, Short-term holiday letting.