The Property Council has urged the federal opposition not to derail the government’s build-to-rent agenda, warning that disallowing key regulations could jeopardise the delivery of 80,000 new rental homes – including 8,000 affordable dwellings – during a critical phase of the housing crisis.
The warning from the Property Council comes as recent ABS data shows Australia’s rental growth is easing, but affordability remains stretched. Rents are still rising faster than wages, vacancy rates remain below average in most capitals, and tenants continue to face significant financial pressure.
The Coalition has announced it will move to disallow regulations that underpin the federal government’s build-to-rent tax concessions – reforms that passed the Senate during the final sitting of the last Parliament.
The proposed changes are designed to attract long-term institutional investment in professionally managed rental housing. Build-to-rent projects are already well established in comparable economies such as the US and UK and are increasingly viewed as a solution to housing shortages in urban areas.
Property Council chief executive Mike Zorbas (pictured) said disallowing the regulations would amount to a major setback for housing supply at a time when renters and buyers alike are being squeezed.
“This is wrecking ball policy,” Zorbas said in a media release. “The main game, the only game in Australia right now, should be the rapid supply of new housing.”
He noted that the demand pressure on both renters and buyers is intensifying, with new housing supply lagging well behind targets.
“We need to make owning a home as easy as we can. Equally, people need different housing choices throughout the stages of their lives,” Zorbas said.
“Our supply gap is huge. We are building homes half as fast as we did in 1995 and are 70,000 homes a year behind our targets.”
Zorbas warned that blocking these reforms would have immediate consequences for affordability, especially in the private rental market.
“Australians expect the Parliament to pull every supply lever we can to make homes less expensive for people who need to buy or rent,” he said. “Threatening to knock out 80,000 new rental homes will directly raise the cost of new homes for everyone in the market.”
While the build-to-rent policy faced delays last year, Zorbas argued that Parliament must now shift focus to long-term solutions – including reforms to infrastructure funding, planning systems and taxation.
“We should have moved on from last year’s debate to new policies that reduce last-mile infrastructure bottlenecks, revoke daft state taxes that target new buyers and improve broken planning systems,” he said. “At a time of historic state debt, every private sector dollar must be put to work.”
Zorbas emphasised the role of patient capital in improving affordability across the rental sector.
“Patient institutional investment will put downward pressure on the cost of the thirty per cent of housing stock that makes up the rental market,” he said.
With the National Housing Accord’s target of 1.2 million new homes by 2029 looming, Zorbas urged all sides of Parliament to support policies that enable supply – not hinder it.
“Achieving the nation’s welcome 1.2 million new home target depends on all parliamentarians backing policies that boost housing supply,” the Property Council said.
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