Anthony Albanese is here to stay, at least for another three years.
The Australian prime minister managed to hang on to Australia's top spot, during Saturday's landslide election in which the Labor party secured more than 85 seats and Albanese became the first prime minister in more than two decades to win a second consecutive term.
Much of the Labor government's victory hinged on cost-of-living concerns and housing affordability issues.
So what exactly is Albanese's housing agenda? And how much of it will impact the nation's property markets?
"It depends on how much of it they actually carry through with," Adele Andrews, director and broker at Melbourne-based Australian Property Home Loans, told Australian Broker. "The last few years of a Labor Government hasn't exactly been favorable for the Australian property market. So I'm a little bit cautious to be honest about what it's actually going to mean for the property market. Whether they actually implement change from these policies remains to be seen."
With so many reforms in place, it's crucial for mortgage brokers to stay on top of developments.
Here's a breakdown of Albanese's promises, and what they could potentially mean for the property market, as well as mortgage holders.
Central to Labor's housing agenda are a number of initiatives aimed at first-time homeowners. First and foremost is the expansion of the First Home Guarantee scheme, which is sometimes called the 5% Deposit Scheme.
This program allows first-home buyers to purchase property with a deposit as little as 5%. The government guarantees the other 15% of the standard 20% the deposit. With the 20% deposit achieved, the mortgage no longer needs lenders mortgage insurance (LMI), which is a significant upfront cost for borrowers with small deposits. A larger deposit also potentially puts borrowers in a position to obtain a more favorable interest rate.
The updated version of the plan, which is set to begin Jan. 1, 2026, will remove income caps: $125,000 for individuals and $200,000 for couples. Depending on the state, price caps on the loan amount will also be lifted. That means a Sydneysider could potentially purchase a $1 million property with as little as a $50,000 deposit.
While the program has been praised for helping a number of first-time homebuyers enter the market, many of whom would have been priced out otherwise, others argue that the program will cause home prices to surge thanks to increased market demand.
SQM Research Managing Director Louis Christopher estimated that prices could jump as much as 15%.
Meanwhile, the Help to Buy Scheme is a shared equity scheme that allows up to 40,000 first-home buyers to co-purchase homes with the government. The government has agreed to up its allocation to the program by another $800 million.
But Andrews said the bigger issue is the nation's continued lack of housing.
"The focus should be not so much on people entering the market, but providing more from a supply perspective," she explained. "Yes, some first-time buyers need help and the schemes are really quite beneficial. But there's a lot of schemes that first-time home buyers can already access to get into the market. So I think that everything is relatively okay from that perspective.
"Now the focus needs to be on supply," Andrews continued. "Because until we address that, the whole property market and prices and all that sort of thing is still going to be somewhat prohibitive for people to enter the market while demand still exceeds supply."
In response to the nation's housing shortage, Albanese's camp has pledged to commit $10 billion to the construction of 100,000 new homes, all for first-home buyers, as well as said it would build 1.2 million new homes by 2029 as part of the National Housing Accord. There are also social accelerator programs that promise to create thousands of new social homes across Australia and apprentice incentive payout programs meant to attract more people to jobs in construction and the clean energy sectors, which would likely increase construction.
In addition, Australia's non-resident buying ban prevents non-citizens and non-residents from buying existing homes for two years. The move is meant to increase the housing supply for Australians.
