2d ago

'Investor' is a dirty word for first-home buyers — but are they the real villains?

www.abc.net.au How Australia's housing market spun out of control — and what we can do to fix it

Margaret's property investment odyssey peaked at 40 properties. At the other end of the spectrum, first-home buyers Justin and Lana are accustomed to disappointment. So how do we solve Australia's housing affordability crisis?

Property investment is ingrained in the Australian psyche, but is it too easy to cast landlords as the villain in our housing crisis?

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Australia is a colony of convicts which grew up with aspirations of becoming a nation of wardens. Being a landlord is a socially sanctioned proxy of this desire.
Profit from any sector which interfaces with housing should only ever be tolerated when the social housing wait lists are measured in weeks and months, instead of the years and decades they’ve currently ballooned to. Property owners and their enablers should hurt until it’s no longer a problem.
This country also needs to actively acknowledge that luck and camping equipment are structural, load-bearing elements of this nation’s housing policies, and work to remove them from these roles. Involuntary homelessness and precarious housing should be indefensible outcomes.
Further, the classification of affordable housing needs to be annihilated. The first 100% of the housing supply should, by definition, be affordable for the function of providing appropriate primary residences. The existence of the concept helps permit the general real estate industry to abdicate what should be its primary function of housing the population, and artificially inflates the legitimacy of perpetual charitable organisations.
Short-term, seasonal, emergency, premium, etc. housing should only be tenable uses for residential dwellings when the initial 100% demand for primary residences has been met.
- Well said. Thank you for helping me to clarify my own thoughts on this.

Yes and fuck them. I'm keen on a one br / studio to live in. Airbnb investors have snatched them up at above market rate because they can neg gear the loan while taking in fat Airbnb cash renting it.

Hoarding a scarce, essential resource to make money is villain shit, yes. Get a real job, Margaret.
That said, the real villains are politicians for not outlawing housing investment. Privileged opportunists will do it until it's illegal.
- That said, the real villains are politicians for not outlawing housing investment
  Why would they implement something people don't want?
  Bill Shorten went to the election with attempts to bring house prices down and lost an unlosable election
  The liberal party have offered nothing to reduce house prices and they're in the lead to win the next election
  
  Yeah, that's right. I remember that campaign. A raft of actual progressive policies to address some of Australia's most pressing concerns... and it lost. It was a real turning point.
  Houses are most people's primary investment. You can argue about whether or not that ought to be the case but it is the case and can't be readily undone.
  While it's still getting harder to purchase your first house, everyone who already has a house has an interest in preserving house prices. I don't have the numbers to hand, but something like 60% of voting Australians live in a home they own, but fewer 20 to 30 year olds own homes than at any time in the last 50 years.
  ... that's a complicated way of saying things are harder than ever for first home owners but there's still no political support to address the core problems.

Thousands of words of waffle to try to be apologists for those poor unfairly maligned property investors who were just doing their best when they took advantage of circumstances and taxation benefits to snap up the available supply of a limited resource.
Do they realise that enabling this class of people to do these things without the threat of social consequence is at least in part how this gets normalised.
Not only that but it skews society. My sister owns two properties thanks to an interstate move for work requiring her to spend more than a decade away from the first home unit she purchased. That first unit was on the rental market for a little under a year while my Mum saw out the lease at her rental she then moved into my sisters and is maintaining the unit as though it was her own. She pays the mortgage, pays for maintenance, rates etc. My sister calls the aggregate of these payments rent (I imagine she derives some tax benefits from this but I don't imagine it's super significant and she does pay for things like strata fees herself). Every time she talks to her bank she gets harassed about not deriving enough income from this property asset and that she won't be eligible for more money until she raises the "rent" my mother pays... By a lot. She is currently looking to sell the 2nd house she bought to put the money towards the next interstate purchase for the new requirements of her job and is being told the bank won't extend her a loan until the rent on the unit is increased to a "reasonable" amount.
Our system is broken, badly, and the only corrections I can see that would reintroduce equity will destroy the people who have invested into the property ponzi scheme. Find me a government who would bankrupt a large portion of the population, including themselves, for a better future. I'll arrange an airborne porcine squadron to replace the Roulettes for the next ANZAC day to celebrate.
- Sounds like it's time to refinance with another bank. If she's servicing the loan, they can go fuck themselves
  
  I don't know all the ins and outs of her financial situation. But I do know it's been a point of contention. And she is not the first property owner I have talked to who has been pinged for not charging enough rent as far as a bank was concerned.

but are they the real villains?
Yes.

Yes. Next question.

Landords and investors are the problem. They dont produce anything.

Exponential tax rate increases...
The more you own, the higher percent you pay in tax on all the properties.
Eventually it would get to some level where the increase is prohibitive and would stop companies from expanding.
But the real benefit is giving smaller landlords a way to compete. Otherwise a corp with 100 homes in an area can depress rent short term so the small landlords sell. Then when the corpnowns the majority, they jack up rent and there's virtually zero options. People pay or move from the area

Yes, incentivising housing as the best way to invest without shoring up the supply to meet growing population. The master builders association even released a report to the government advising they can possibly help but they need to have certain ted tape bottlenecks addressed.

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