ADVICE OVER THE HOLIDAY PERIOD
Tenants Advice & Advocacy Services have limited availability over the holiday period. The Tenants' Union will operate a Tenancy Advice Hotline from Wednesday 18/12/2024 until Wednesday 8/1/2025 (excluding weekends and public holidays). The hours of operation are 10am-1pm and 2-5pm.
Get advice on: (02) 8117 3750 or 1800 251 101
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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See notes about the Digest and a list of other contributors here. Many thanks to those contributors for sharing links with us.
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Archive
Holiday hotspots beg short-stay landlords to rent to locals as housing supply plummets
Alanna Tomazin (No paywall)Popular tourist spots are calling on people with holiday lets and Airbnbs to rent them to locals as the housing crisis deepens. (Bega District News)
https://www.begadistrictnews.com.au/story/7886276/rent-your-holi…
# NSW, Rent, Housing affordability, Housing market, Short-term holiday letting.Social housing rent arrears hit record levels in Scotland
Grainne Cuffe Inside Housing (Paywall)The number of social tenants in rent arrears in Scotland is at its highest ever level, according to the Scottish Housing Regulator.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/social-housing-rent-ar…
# International, Public and community housing, Rent.‘We don’t want it wrecked’: The fight to save a slice of Sydney suburbia
Billie Eder The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Residents in the southern Sydney suburb of Mortdale want the Georges River Council to release any updated drafts of the suburb’s master plan, which they say could turn the area into a high-rise jungle like neighbouring Hurstville.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/we-don-t-want-it-wrecked-the…
# NSW, Campaigns and law reform, Housing market, Local Government, Planning and development.Property developer will raze thousands of trees despite local distress
Andrew Taylor The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Thousands of trees will be bulldozed as part of a residential development in northern Sydney despite opposition from residents and a local council. Property developer Mirvac has lodged plans to build 418 apartments and houses on the old IBM site at West Pennant Hills, 20 kilometres northwest of the Sydney CBD and next to the Cumberland State Forest.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/property-developer-will-raze…
# NSW, Housing market, Landlords and agents, Local Government, Planning and development.House prices on Qld's Granite Belt record 0.5 per cent increase, defying national trend
David Chen ABC (No paywall)Queensland's Granite Belt region has gone against the grain to be one of the few areas in Australia to record an increase in house prices.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-04/southern-downs-house-pric…
# Australia, Housing market.Elliott Heads farmland to be developed into South Beach master-planned community
Johanna Marie, Lucy Loram and Russell Varley ABC (No paywall)It's one of the last remaining coastal suburbs in Queensland where you can buy a beachside block of land for under $300,000. Just four-and-a-half hours drive north of Brisbane, Elliott Heads in the Bundaberg region is known for its sweeping white sandy beaches and idyllic weather. But the seaside haven that is home to 1,160 people is earmarked to undergo a major metamorphosis that has been decades in the making.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-03/beachside-elliott-heads-m…
# Australia, Housing market.Rent-to-buy emerging as a new path to home ownership, but is it worth it?
Alexander Lewis ABC (No paywall)Many renters would be nervous about putting a nail in the wall, let alone a pool in the yard.
But Andrew Robertson has signed no ordinary contract. "We've bought the house but not bought the house," Mr Robertson said. The Gold Coast father has entered a rent-to-buy agreement, meaning if all goes to plan, he will one day own his home. If he had gone to a bank, Mr Robertson would have needed a deposit of around $150,000 to purchase the house at Pacific Pines. Instead, he paid around $36,000 to one of two rent-to-buy companies that have launched in Queensland in the past year. ... [But] an academic warns that the rent-to-buy model, billed as "new path to home ownership", is risky because prices are locked in regardless of how the market behaves. "Buyers need to be very conscious of what they are signing up for," Professor Shaun Bond from the University of Queensland's business school said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-03/rent-to-buy-mortgage-rent…
# Australia, Home ownership.Special Edition - Rent increases
Tenant News Tenants' Union of NSW (No paywall)Tenants are already doing it tough. Lack of housing, inadequate tenancy rights, fire, flood and pandemic, have combined to create the severe rental crisis we are currently experiencing. Sadly, some landlords and agents are using this as an opportunity to push tenants even further. Getting a rent increase on top of everything else is a massive burden, but that's what a growing number of renters are now facing. In this special edition of 'Tenant News', we present several new tools we've developed to help renters who are facing an increase. Also, read Jemima Mowbray's blog entitled: 'Landlords hiking rents: what can we do?' at: [https://www.tenants.org.au/blog/landlords-hiking-rents-what-can-we-do]
https://us3.campaign-archive.com/?e=7cb9765e09&u=29c79d2825cb376…
# NSW, Rent, Campaigns and law reform.