It appears that where rental stock has been removed from the market, it is much more likely that a home has been purchased by an owner-occupier than to be used for [short-term accommodation]
They said there was “no doubt” the key issue driving rental market disruption in Queensland was a limited supply of homes despite strong demand.
They said a 10 per cent increase in total dwellings could cause rent prices to drop by 1 to 2 per cent.
Those are some key quotes, IMO. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the private market is not going to solve this problem under the current conditions. They don’t want to build large quantities of new homes, because that doesn’t maximise profit relative to slowly releasing a large apartment building here and there. We need incentives for large amounts of housing to be built at once, and we need the government to be far more involved in that process.
On the other hand, this comment under the article has some truth to it:
I think it’s a case of lots and small measures that will move the dial, as no one measure will get the desired outcome.
No argument there, BUT it’s not just as simple as building more houses. It’s no use building a bunch of affordable houses out at Toowoomba if all the jobs are still in Brisbane, as people still need to live near where they work. There are already plenty of affordable places to live, they are just too far for most people to commute. And nobody really likes the idea of knocking down houses close to Brisbane and replacing them with towering apartment blocks - the traffic is already bad enough as-is.
With more companies pushing for employees to come back to the office, I do wonder whether some sort of tax incentive to encourage remote work would be better. If a company received a financial incentive for each employee who lived more than 100 km from their base of operations, not only would that make it easier for people who cannot work remotely (e.g. peak hour traffic wouldn’t be so bad) but it might help revitalise some of these country towns that are suffering from dwindling populations.
