Yup. There are a whole raft of different factors at play that are the reason it came to a head now (construction difficulties, restrictive zoning laws, the rise of Airbnb, increasing numbers of people moving out/splitting up during COVID, etc.), but the underlying cause of the problem is the fact that housing is treated by our government as an investment vehicle.
It’s okay, IMO, if people want to invest in housing. I’m not one of the people claiming that owning an investment property should be banned. However, the ability to make a profit off of that investment needs to be secondary to the primary purpose of housing…giving people a safe and secure place to live.
I find this to be a rather poor article, to be honest. It mentions the need to construct more housing, but makes no mention of the problems that caused that to be the case (it suggests “low rate of borrowing”, but doesn’t mention supply difficulties in the construction industry, or the restrictive low-density zoning laws). The only mention of anything related to investment is around the idea that we need more of it, not the problem that is treating housing as an investment in the first place (which is itself the reason governments are reluctant to allow huge amounts of construction…or build way more public housing). Honestly, it feels like it was co-written by the Property Council.
Instigate@aussie.zone 10 months ago
I think a change that’s very easy to make, will have some impact, and would draw far less pushback than more extreme measures would be to have landlords forced to report all of their costs, earnings and capital gains related to their property either directly to the tenant(s) or on a publicly accessible register on a regular basis. Prospective tenants would be armed with more information and would be able to know if their landlords are bullshitting with related to costs. Companies could create lists where they rank landlords based on how much profit they leech from their tenants. People would be able to know if they’re renting from someone who owns one additional property or fifty-three.
It won’t make a massive difference, but it’s a low-cost and fairly easily implementable measure that could be taken as part of a broader suite of measures.