Making buying and renting a home in Australia easier has become a top priority for politicians in Canberra, who are trying to entice voters ahead of the upcoming federal election.
Political parties have already started dishing out housing policy proposals for the next election, which hasn’t been called yet but must be held by May 17.
It comes as buying and renting a home remains a major issue for voters nationwide, with housing affordability and rental affordability sitting at record low levels.
Before we go into each parties policies, let's run the numbers on what has happened since the last election:
So, this is how each party plans to tackle the challenges facing both would-be buyers and Australia's growing cohort of renters.
So far, the Labor government has focused on delivering the housing policies that it promised at the last election.
Federal housing minister Clare O’Neil told Realestate.com.au recently that the government was focused on getting more homes built quickly nationwide.
The Help to Buy scheme has been its flagship demand-side housing policy to directly help about 40,000 homebuyers, which only became law last year.
It's a shared equity scheme where the government gives an equity contribution worth up to 40% of the property to homebuyers, however those buyers will have to pay back the value of the equity stake when they sell their home.
Supporters have said Help to Buy will help Australians, particularly those who have struggled to save a deposit, get into the housing market sooner.
However, critics have argued it will cost the government billions of dollars and they question whether the government should be in the business of home ownership at all.
To help first-home borrowers, the Labor government recently announced plans to soften home lending rules so that banks can exclude HECS student debts from mortgage applications in a bid to boost their borrowing power.
On the supply side, Labor has delivered its $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) to fund the building of 30,000 social and affordable homes in five years.
It has also invested billions of dollars into other initiatives such as the social housing accelerator and the housing infrastructure facility to try and supercharge the home building industry.
Home building approvals still remain at below-average levels despite the funding injection, but proponents suggest it will take some time for new money to flow through to the struggling home building industry.
To help renters, the Labor government has been working with the state and territory governments – which oversee rental rules - to strengthen renter rights nationwide.
And it has increased the maximum rates of Commonwealth rent assistance, which goes to people living on government payments, by about 45% since coming to office.
Community groups and the Greens have said Labor needs to do more to help renters, though.
A new housing policy that the Labor government has announced so far in this election cycle has been a two-year ban on foreign investors purchasing existing homes from April this year.
However, it was an idea that the Coalition first proposed last year.
The Coalition has taken a different tack to Labor, with a focus on helping first-home buyers get on the property ladder.
Federal shadow housing minister Michael Sukkar told Realestate.com.au recently that their priority was putting forward housing policies that got Australians into home ownership sooner.
The Coalition’s main demand-side policy has been its superannuation for housing promise.
Under the plan, Australians would be allowed to access up to $50,000, or 40%, of their super to buy their first home, which would need to be returned when the house was sold.
Proponents have said Aussies should be allowed to use their own personal savings to avoid retiring without a home or a mortgage, which can be costly in retirement.
However, the super industry and economists have said that the plan would drive up home prices and limit how much Australians could save for their retirement.
The opposition has also been betting big on reducing overseas migration in a bid to take the pressure off the housing market.
They have said they will cut permanent migration – from 185,000 to 140,000 for two years, plus other migration changes.
They also want to reduce the numbers of foreign students at metropolitan universities, increase the student visa fee and apply it to foreign students who change providers.
For home loan borrowers, the opposition has pledged to ease home lending rules and reduce the mortgage serviceability buffer in an effort to increase their borrowing power.
To boost housing supply, the Coalition has promised $5 billion for housing infrastructure to fund essential infrastructure such as water, power, and sewerage at greenfield housing development sites.
The Labor government has been investing in similar infrastructure already, but hasn’t committed as much money as the opposition and has opened it up to development projects of all types.
It has also pledged to freeze any further changes to the National Construction Code for 10 years – a move that has been opposed by architects and other groups concerned that it may compromise housing quality and innovation.
While the Greens are unlikely to form government in their own right, the increasing prospect of a hung parliament means they could be kingmakers in the next parliament.
The Greens’ housing agenda has a clear leaning towards renters and first-home buyers.
The Greens have been calling to freeze and cap rent increases to provide immediate relief to renters, however the power to freeze and cap rents technically lies with the state and territory governments.
They would like to establish a National Renters Protection Authority to enforce and protect renter rights too.
The party has been pushing to phase out tax benefits, including negative gearing, for property investors with more than two properties. It’s a plan that’s been opposed by Labor and the Coalition.
Additionally, the Greens would seek to introduce a discount HomeKeeper rate to deliver cheaper mortgages, and create a public property developer to build 360,000 good quality public homes over five years.
The public property developer plan is a bold idea that has received support from voters and community groups, however the Parliamentary Budget Office has said its "highly uncertain" costings puts the policy at $40 billion over the decade.
While Australia’s biggest political parties have different housing agendas, what’s clear is that housing has become a top tier issue across the political spectrum.
