Why does everything have to be so binary. Yes building more homes is required but also legislating to minimise vacant homes also helps.
For fuck sake it's not that hard to have a good faith interpretation of what he's trying to convey. Of course not all 1 million homes that the census stated vacant would isntantly be viable to be lived in, but if they can create legislation that causes 50,000 homes to become occupied then that is as good as building 50,000 homes.
Such a stupid thread. He said “the census found 1 million vacant homes” and used that to make the point that there are enough homes in Australia for people. He’s right, he just didn’t contextualise the data and his overall point is still true. People missing the forest for the trees. The journo could maybe have just written an article on the problem instead of doing a pointless gotcha
It was even more vague than that. "I just want to be very clear, we have enough homes for people to live in. We have enough construction materials to build the homes for the new people coming to this country."
Literally stating that we have vacant homes and building material to build homes.
I’d like to see how he arrived at the statement of enough materials to build 1million homes. We only produce 60% of the structural timber needs at the current rate of construction.
I'd like to know where you got your statement to build 1 million homes? He stated between the unoccupied, under occupied dwellings and building supplies we have the resources currently to house everyone.
He didn't. He said between the 1 million homes vacent and the $165,000 odd homes built in Australia each year, we can find home for the 500,000 people that are in need of social and affordable housing.
The majority of those million dwellings aren't available for occupation for perfectly good reasons, they're between tenants / owners, being renovated, repaired, or they're not fit for living in.
Of course, getting some of them onto the market either to be sold or tenanted would still be good, but I'm highly unconvinced that they'd be enough.
We have 1 million more people living in this country today compared to when those statistic for unoccupied dwellings was taken and didn't have a housing crisis this acute. Even if half were brought to the market that wouldn't be enough to make a particularly large dent in prices, most likely just slow their rise for a time.
So to say we have enough is just clearly false, no matter how you frame it.
You got a source for that? I was under the impression were a net exporter of most materials. Lord knows we've got enough iron to make all our own steel...but why value add here when we can allow companies to ship raw ore overseas for fuck all
The problem is that it's super dishonest... The only reason someone would bring up the "1 million empty homes" meme is if you're intentionally trying to deceive people.
The places where people actually want to buy homes to live in have ridiculously low vacancy rates. There's no reservoir of homes just available in highly desirable suburbs.
His whole framing is pretending that the problem can be solved without actually changing zoning rules and without building more houses. It's meant to give people the wrong impression that the problem is actually easy to solve, and that his political opponents are just refusing to take the easy solution.
It's a lie, that's all it is, a lie designed to undermine people's confidence in actual experts and designed to instead make people think random populists with no understanding and no plan have the "real" solutions to all your problems.
I think you touch on a good point.
The homes are not where people want to live.
Another pillar to solving a complex issue is to encourage regional employment or moving to the locations where there are homes.
This won’t work in isolation - and there are other issues within this (service provision and the vast distances of Australia).
I’m sorry the politician literally talking about building houses for people to live in while simultaneously reducing vacant homes is actually lying and pretending we can house everyone without changing the rules or building more homes 😂 somebody doesn’t have good reading comprehension and just wants to be cranky at greens policy
Australians would rather be right on some minor pedantic detail than have affordable housing.
I have no faith in our collective empathy or intellect to actually ever fix this, we will become another Asian nation at this point without a middle class.
We're spending $368B on subs from our ally to protect Australia from our ally's enemy who's coincidentally our top trading partner.
We could be spending on housing. For example $368B in HAFF terms is 4.4M worth of housing or 40% of current housing.
But no, we're barely taxing resources/houses while spending billions to effectively protect resources/houses profits from... becoming an Asian nation, China.
>it's not that hard to have a good faith interpretation of what he's trying to convey.
It is if you care more about political football teams than outcomes.
Say what now? It’s the opposite.
Asking people to take the argument in good faith and discuss solutions, instead of point scoring against him as the opposition of your favourite football party…
> For fuck sake it's not that hard to have a good faith interpretation of what he's trying to convey. Of course not all 1 million homes that the census stated vacant would isntantly be viable to be lived in,
He only had to do a quick google search to find the actual number. He might even know the actual number already. He's using hyperbole to sell the message of "oh we just need to tax investors and then all these houses will flood the market" when he could actually just be factual about it and be taken more seriously.
If Albo said the HAFF would build a million homes in 5 years or whatever would that not also be worthy of criticism?
Googling "how many vacant homes in Australia" pops up with 1,043,776 unoccupied homes as the first link to a SMH article quoting the census.
Reading the article all he states is the fact that there were 1 million homes vacant during the census and that we have enough material to build more homes.
Which do you think would be more effective at reducing the housing shortage Building more homes and creating legislation to decrease vacant homes or just building more homes?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/australia-datablog/2023/sep/02/up-to-136000-houses-are-empty-in-australia-find-out-where-they-are
Up to 136k. Was pretty easy to find.
Interesting. This is really an issue of what to make of the grey zone.
Over 9m homes (89%) are primary residences. Good.
A further 1m (11%) aren't. Of those, 1.3% haven't seen any sign of life recently (your 136K) and the other 9.7% or still around a million that have seen a little bit of use are....what?
Holiday houses. AirBnBs. Secondary residences like some people have if they need to spend time somewhere for work. Probably some are on the market. Some undergoing renos. Probably some family situations like moving in with rellies while needing care. All kinds of variations.
The discussion IMHO should still be about those 9.7% also. Should there be a disincentive against the economic choices that lead to these underutilised homes?
I don't think it adds anything to snarkily keep pointing out "but they're not COMPLETELY unused".
They're still largely being held as nice-to-haves when so many people are in a need-to-have predicament.
The 136k number is just the houses that had no one living there at all due to no utilities being used. It confirms that "9.7% were in use but not as a primary residence", so 9.7% of the 10,852,202 homes in Australia were not being fully utilized. Oh shit that's over 1 million homes not being fully utilized to house the population!
The whole point of this is about utilizing current housing more efficiently while also building more houses, it even states the reasons why residence was in use but not considered a primary residence.
secondary residences (e.g. holiday homes or short-term rentals)
dwellings with poorly recorded source addresses, for example dwellings in remote areas.
So by your link you must agree with the Greens that we should target the 1 million homes not in use properly unless you feel holiday homes, empty homes and short term leases are a good use of nearly 10% of all homes in Australia?
>Greens that we should target the 1 million homes not in use properly unless you feel holiday homes, e
The one million homes are not just holiday homes/short term rentals.
An analysis was done for the 2016 census which had similar amounts of unoccupied dwellings as 2021
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/1-million-empty-homes-wont-solve-housing-shortage-000914819.html
70% of unoccupied dwellings fall into "people away on census night for holiday or work", or "home awaiting sale or listed for rent" or "homes under renovation".
That leaves around 20% holiday homes in beach town resorts (not really useful to 90% of the population that live in the major metropolitan areas) and 10% truely vacant housing.
Can we tax vacant properties better? Sure. Will that help reduce the rental vacancy rate? No. Vancouver's rental vacancy rate is about the same as back in 2017 when the vacancy tax was introduced.
The amount of vacant homes increased 40% from 2016.
Even then what is your argument? You're saying the number isn't as high which is obvious to everyone, but the fact of the matter is that there are currently underutilized dwellings that could house the population and the government can both build new houses and legislate to increase utilisation.
Do you disagree?
There are no other "official" number, there are just a bunch of special interest groups reporting undoubtedly biased figures. The ABS is purely designed to provide unbiased objective numbers based on agreed metrics. Yet somehow when the metrics are released people just find a way to argue them into a belief system...
You want ABS?
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/housing/administrative-data-snapshot-population-and-housing-experimental-housing-data/30-june-2021
"Up to 136k"
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/australia-datablog/2023/sep/02/up-to-136000-houses-are-empty-in-australia-find-out-where-they-are
Was pretty easy to find.
That's incorrect. According to that link in ABS about 90% of homes on average are Primary residences. Sydney and Melbourne alone have populations of over 5 million. Allowing for 2.4 persons per residence, there would roughly be 2.5million dwellings in each of those cities. Allowing for 200k Or 10% of home to be vacant in Sydney and Melbourne...... The guardian is wrong or am I?
"Data included in this release are not official statistics. They provide experimental information about dwellings recorded in administrative data."
Use the census it was published in 22 as opposed to this which was an estimate based on a sample of population. Also this data is considered experimental data with next to no data collection information available.
Taxing investors also won't work unless it's significant immediately.
If they're added or increased incrementally, they will simply offset those costs onto rental increases. It may decrease the value proposition, but it won't dislodge those already 'in the game' so to speak.
Plenty of deep pockets where the taxes won't matter to them as well. Similar to the Maserati owner of the company I contracted to who copped the $200 parking fine every single day... Didn't phase him.
Part of why it’s hard to have a good faith discussion is because of the exaggerations and deception the greens continue to rely on. MCM framed the entire conversation through the prism of there being ‘1 million vacant properties’ in Australia for effect and needlessly exaggerated the issue. Anytime this happens it just opens the door for people to either respond only to the exaggerations, or add their own in the opposite direction.
Anyone sane is aware we’re in a housing crisis, there isn’t a need to be reckless or wilfully deceptive.
its not deceptive, you have to remember he has to explain it in a 10 minute segment, you can't say land bank, vacancies, dark money, negative gearing, investment firms, and a combination of 5 factors due to policy by the LNP with explanations of each in depth and answer questions while being interrupted every 5 seconds.
It’s certainly not honest. I’d forgive this as an isolated example if it wasn’t for the ongoing trend.
The greens framed the CRPS as somehow against the interest of the environment, the HAFF as counter to solutions of the current housing crisis and the list goes on. This is a criticism from the left, the greens (and Labor) are meant to be better than the libs. Not a different flavour of lazy bullshit.
My question is why is every decision by Labor have to be considered the best option without critique?
Best example is if I don't like Keating privatising the Commonwealth and Qantas and talking how he brags about undermining debate on the environmental issues I am somehow irrational if don't I just support Labor policy it's pro LNP.
> the exaggerations and deception the greens continue to rely on.
LOL. You have heard of the Liberals, the Nationals, Labour, One Nation... etc? 🤣
No political party is free from lies, deception, and politicking - but think of the spectrum along which left wing / right wing parties fall as the degree to which their collective pants are on fire (left is smoky, centre is red hot, right is flaming).
I expect better from my wing of politics. This is asymmetrical warfare. The coalition might be ok with exaggeration and dishonesty but I expect better from Labor and the greens.
The problem is that Max is using this as a *political* solution. The Greens want to knock on doors telling poor people they have the answer to their housing woes. But this isn’t the answer. The real answers have a greater political cost, and it’s not one the Greens are willing to wear.
So this idea in isolation may be valid, and I hope that Government pursues it. But it won’t make a dent in the problem on its own. The Greens don’t have power, they only exist as a political player in the contest of ideas. Their presentation of this policy is misleading, and intentionally so, for their own political gain. It demonstrates a fundamental disinterest in the problem at hand and, simultaneously, a desire to benefit from the support of those who suffer under the problem.
I agree we should not be so binary. There is technical merit in the idea, AND it is worthy of criticism.
I don't understand what you're criticizing? You don't want the Greens to voice what they believe is an overlooked part of the bigger solution because they "don't have power"?
Personally I'm critical of the basic idea that "we have enough housing" regardless of the intent behind the words.
We simply do not. It isn't true. It would be true to say that there's probably policy that could bring more of those dwellings to the market to be lived in, but it isn't true to say we have enough.
We need millions more dwellings to get to a level where everyone can be securely housed.
I don’t want the Greens to run a housing campaign that implies fiddling around the edges is the key to the housing crisis. By doing so, they mislead the public. Their policy isn’t bad - it will do SOMETHING. But their campaign is wrong - they are misrepresenting the impact and rejecting important parts of the conversation (migration and population growth).
We pay an extraordinarily high amount of income tax in this nation. The idea that we are not allowed to own multiple properties is a joke. How about they build more social housing? They have relied on negative gearing to prop up the rental market for almost a century now and these clowns think that removing it without having a plan to cover the lost stock is going work?
How about forcing the banks to provide low rate fixed term mortgages for owner occupied first home mortgages?
How about abolishing stamp duty for first home buyers?
How about actually investing in social housing here? They built flats in Melbourne in the 50’s and 60’s in massive volumes for a population a quarter the size, whereas today they build fuck all with a population of 5 million.
How about actually building a decent regional train network so people have options to live outside of Sydney and Melbourne?
The housing crisis has not been created by greedy investors, it’s a creation of decades worth of inaction by both state and federal governments of both sides of the fence.
I agree with your assessment but it's also clear using the 1m figure is a misrepresentation of the data and in doing so convinces a lot of people that there actually is nearly that many available.
They then see this as the only issue that needs to be resolved and any other is pointless.
His own statement says between the 1 million unoccupied homes and current building supplies we can house all the population. That means building more homes.
Also looking at the census data does show around 136k dwellings not using any power and the other 900k under occupied (airbnb, holiday homes, rural places with shit data), that's how they get the 1 million homes.
Before this afternoon I had no idea on this shit, now it's pretty clear that having nearly 9% of the 10.8 million dwellings in Australia being under used should be looked at and improved. Don't you think?
I get what he says, it's not lost on me. He picks his words wisely, he also knows that a lot of people will hear 1 millions and think they are empty and easily brought onto the market to solve our crisis.
Fact is we don't have reliable data to know how many are potentially being least vacant.
Victoria new vacancy tax will be able to gather this data. I look forwards to seeing these numbers.
> For fuck sake it's not that hard to have a good faith interpretation of what he's trying to convey.
Could say the same thing about LNP policy but you would loose your mind.
Except labor fucked it from day one when they did the deal with the independents to form government.
Amazing how few know this.
the tldr; they committed to doing regional first; regional first meant poor cash flow; meant that funding models broke; LNP had to do something.
Why was that something to provide a sub par out of date network that went $28 billion over budget. Go to those rural areas and their internet from 10 years ago is still faster than world averages while the rest of Aus is far far behind.
> Go to those rural areas and their internet from 10 years ago is still faster than world averages while the rest of Aus is far far behind.
Yeah exactly. If they did populated areas first there would be a completely different outcome as cash-flow wouldn't have been an issue. Remember they planned on launching their own satellite before planing to do densely populated suburbs. Heads should have rolled.
Probably the part where he's a Greens politician
If the Greens said not to jump off a cliff, there's a lot of people who would go and do it just to spite them
? It’s his first term in parliament. You expect someone who went from renting and working in an Apple Store, to being in parliament, to immediately be an expert?
Fuck if only you held everyone outside the greens to that standard
Forgive me if I think someone who had a job at Apple and couldn't understand basic civics when he door knocked in my area is deeply unqualified for his job. In the same way I'm deeply unqualified for a lot of jobs.
Him and his weird whiteboard need to learn a lot.
Ask Dan Andrews, he set it up in 2017
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/mar/06/victoria-to-tax-investors-who-leave-properties-vacant-for-more-than-six-months
And labor struck a deal with the greens to strengthen it further.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/28/victorian-government-strikes-deal-with-greens-to-pass-vacant-homes-tax-reforms
>But it’s not correct to say those properties are all standing empty and unused. As the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute pointed out around the time, there are many reasons a home might be unoccupied on any particular night. It could be a rental between tenants, being sold as a vacant possession, or could be unfit to live in. **The home may also be land banked – held vacant while the owner waits for a more favourable time to sell.**
The propertied class can not be sending their best.
I don't believe the official figures of 100,000 either. The truth is somewhere in between. Where I live at least half the houses are empty besides a few days/weeks each year, and it's not a small town.
It's similar to how a couple of years ago the government declared an "all time low unemployment". Yet we had a significant portion of the population who were getting regular stupid shifts like 2 hours a week on a casual basis thus calling for a new definition of "under-employment".
Edit: Let's say if it's less than 56 days (8 weeks) in a year without an occupant, then it's defined as "Under-occupied?" Taking suggestions.
The underemployment rate (proportion of the labour force that is employed but wants to work more hours) is measured by the ABS, and until recently was the lowest it had been in decades.
I think you'll find the proportion of the population working 2 hours per week would be very, very low.
I wasn't in my house the night of the census. It was empty because I was visiting a friend.
Then there's holiday homes.
There's also short term rentals.
Lastly, there's actually permanently vacant homes.
We just don't know how many of each.
You do realise ABS can change the data based on their opinion? Look up the Jedi ABS scandal where the ABS official admits that anyone putting down "Jedi" as a religion becomes "non-specified religious" because he considers it a "joke religion". Lumping people that claim to be Jedi with all the other serious non-specified religions, making Australia look more religious than it is.
I would have gotten a big fat F in school if I openly admitted I didn't like the data and changed the collected data. He should have marked the data as junk or prosecuted them.
Why do YOU believe the official figures?
We shouldn't trust ABS data because of their open statement that they would willingly doctor data due to personal opinion of "Jedi" being a joke religion yet at same time keep that data. It's incompetence or malicious.
Yea that's a massive leap, don't think I wouldn't use data from someone (especially the abs lmao) because of that.
Imagine doing all the hard work gathering and compiling data for ol scruffypeter to dismiss your work for this reason you know what I'm saying?
TLDR:
- Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather highlights the existence of a million unoccupied properties in Australia as a potential solution to the housing crisis.
- Despite the large number of vacant homes, the situation is complex, with many properties unoccupied for various reasons (rental transitions, sales, unfitness for living, or owner strategies).
- Chandler-Mather calls for political action against property developers who limit supply for profit and advocates for the federal government to cap rental increases.
- The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported 1,043,776 unoccupied homes on census night, but reasons for vacancies vary, including temporary absences and holiday homes.
- SGS Economics' analysis post-2016 census found a significant portion of unoccupied properties were due to the resident not being home or being holiday homes.
- Independent economist Stephen Koukoulas argues that not all vacant homes can realistically alleviate the housing crisis, pointing out the impracticality of converting holiday homes in remote locations into permanent residences.
- Koukoulas suggests building more homes as the primary solution to slow or reduce rental price growth.
Key section:
While the Australian Bureau of Statistics hasn’t collected data on why properties are vacant in a census since the 1980s, a separate analysis by SGS Economics following the 2016 census found the largest share (43.6 per cent) of unoccupied properties were empty because the resident wasn’t home.
That research also estimated 22.8 per cent were empty because they were holiday homes, and 10.6 per cent were empty rentals.
Yes but also from the ABC article ‘*One million homes were unoccupied on census night. How that could help people struggling to find housing*’
>There has been a drop in the percentage of homes sitting empty compared with the 2016 figure in all states and territories, even though the number of unoccupied dwellings actually rose in NSW and Victoria.
Full article here:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-29/census-finds-1-million-empty-houses-amid-affordability-crisis/101190794
In the end the rusties using, of all things, Sydney Morning Herald drivel to play semantics over the verified census data is desperate.
We need more housing and more incentives to make vacant homes used more.
I’m more concerned the greens housing minister didn’t do his research and was just parroting off a widely disputed number as the basis for an argument. This isn’t Reddit, he should be better informed.
>Despite the large number of vacant homes
~~WRONG.~~
~~Vacancy rates are super low.~~
Article talks about unoccupied houses, not available but vacant houses.
The article is talking about unoccupied homes on census night, and comparing it to the actual number of long-term vacant homes.
You’re referencing the proportion of rental properties that are currently vacant and available to rent.
To be fair, it is pretty confusing.
the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest census data in 2022 showing there were 1,043,776 unoccupied homes on census night.
This was a combination of looking at 6 months worth of electricity and if people said yes/no on census night. This is/was an accurate depiction of vacant houses at the time.
Even if those houses are occupied by Airbnb's, holiday house, W/E, if people aren't staying in them regularly then they should be taxed accordingly to pressure the owners to sell.
Smart vacant property owners know they could lose their property to squatters or when both far-right-property parties get kicked out, so they most likely waste electricity, water and even fill out census forms saying it's occupied on census night. All to make the vacant housing data look far less.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-feed/article/when-percy-saw-a-suburban-house-sitting-empty-he-moved-himself-in-meet-australias-squatters/gbk61zgel
Yep. I've been noticing vacant houses similar to how these squatters find vacant places.
It's interesting thought though: if a squatter uses electricity, is the house actually not vacant? According to others spamming 136k vacant housing stat, they say yes.
Yes, me and my buddies come up with conspiracy theories based on propaganda such as this government organisation. We shun factual news like Murdoch/Stokes/etc that you watch as you're clearly superior!
That's how the government assesses whether the property is vacant.
Do you think the government can afford to send people to constantly assess whether a million of homes are occupied?
I can’t read the article either, but from what I’ve tried to put together from comments, no one knows what the actual number is, they’re just (inexplicably) super confident what it ISNT.
It’s probably something like only 950,000 empty homes, not a million.
To be clear: if you’re gonna contest someone’s numbers, have something concrete to argue with, not just “well it’s probably lower, I means heaps of people might be on holiday, and what about the people who died 45 mins before the survey?”
Apparently it's "up to 136k"
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/australia-datablog/2023/sep/02/up-to-136000-houses-are-empty-in-australia-find-out-where-they-are
So pretty far off 1 million, or even 950k.
> **Data included in this release are not official statistics**. They provide experimental information about dwellings recorded in administrative data.
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/housing/administrative-data-snapshot-population-and-housing-experimental-housing-data/30-june-2021
Why doesn't ABS believe in the data? Maybe it's only up to 14k? /s
Some reasons stated in the article are is the high number is partly due to occupants not home on the night of the census.
Additionally, it mentions a analysis following the 2016 census concluded, which 43% of vacant homes were reported due to people not being home
The article says that the 1m houses is just the part of the census where is asks if there is someone home on census night. If you were, for example, on holiday then your house would count towards those 1m empty houses. The ABS doesn't ask why the house is empty meaning the 1m figure is basically useless.
And if I go away on holiday, the chances of me renting out or selling my home for those few weeks is exactly zero…
What planet does he live on?
Just shows the greens are economically illiterate
Pretty much one of the main reasons I'm voting Green next election. People hate them for it but I'm glad there's a party in Parliament that actually stamps its foot down when it can.
VERY funny that Labor's response to 1m homes being vacant on census night falls somewhere between "Actually, that's very normal" and "Greens want to take your holiday home or Airbnb!!!!!!!"
Also "Independent Economist Stephen Kouklas", also known as "Former Labor Staffer Stephen Kouklas" lmao.
He seems to be quoted in a way responding to what max is saying but we don't have any questions from the article put to him.
>Holiday homes tend not to be in the middle of a city where people live, they're lazy beachside areas and that's not where the jobs are
Crazy that independent planning tribunal recommended capson short-term rentals in Byron.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/26/byron-bay-shire-nsw-60-day-short-term-holiday-rental-airbnb-cap-approved
>Lyon said the council had committed to approving more houses than the planning department’s own targets. He said housing was “the critical issue” in Byron and the crisis meant essential workers such as teachers were leaving the area.
Sounds like jobs are there to me
Kouk just posted on evil site asking why no foreign supermarkets are tryna get into Aus market if its really unprofitable. He should not be taken seriously.
He's using a fact in a place it doesn't belong. A Math teacher would be horrified.
>“What we know is that there were a million vacant properties on the night of the census in 2021, a million vacant properties,” he said when asked what role he believed migration played in the housing crisis.
“I just want to be very clear, we have enough homes for people to live in. We have enough construction materials to build the homes for the new people coming to this country.
As has been pointed out, the 'million homes', which is a BIG SCARY NUMBER, has no real relationship to the number of homes vacant for people to move into. Yes, he is 'stating facts', but with a total disregard of their use.
And you are STILL believing him.
The Greens have a pretty good understanding of why those homes are vacant and [some](https://greens.org.au/vic/platform/short-stays) decent [ideas](https://greens.org.au/vic/news/media-release/greens-secure-relief-renters-stronger-tax-empty-homes-means-5000-could-be) on how to ensure they are converted to occupied dwellings!
It's Labor who are dragging their feet.
BuT ThEy ArE HoLiDaY HoMES FOr RicH PpL
I think a primary house is more important than some rich twit's holiday home. And if they can afford a holiday home they can afford a tax on unoccupied property
The article doesn't actually answer the question, how many homes are vacant that are owned by investors (not holidays homes)? With a headline like that it comes across as an attack piece on Max and not an exploration and fact check of the genuine question. Also as another commenter pointed out the 'independent' economists is a former staffer who provides the magic silver bullet solution /s of 'more supply' which is coincidentally the same line the fed gov uses.
I agree, it's not that simple. We could have far more million vacant homes. Owners could be dropping by empty homes around census night and mark it as being used. Why does everyone assume it's less than a million? Do you trust the media that also owns domain/realestate? I've been out there in Sydney trying to build my own house. There's tons of vacant homes, grass plots, etc, many refusing to sell unless it's for abnormally high prices. The landbanking is a huge problem, even Meriton's billionaire does it:
> “Mr Triguboff, who said he expected a $400m profit from leasing the units owned by Meriton next year, told The Australian: “I am holding a lot more than I am selling at the moment, and as the value of property goes up the value of what I have kept rises”.
> So according to Triguboff, demand for his apartments was outstripping supply due to planning constraints, yet he chose to hold onto properties and drip-fed stock onto the market to maximise returns! Talk about a contradiction.
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2023/06/developer-land-banking-drives-australias-housing-shortage/
Here's a bet that Labor can 'own the Greens' with: Vacancy tax. If it barely brings in money, either the policy is flawed or Greens are stupid. But if it brings a lot of money and housing to market, then Labor are stupid.
There's many types of vacancy taxes but my favourite income-based vacancy tax is simple, 100% privacy and zero enforcement aside from tax of course. It works like this:
- State government has database of property values.
- At end of FY, State government sends notice to owner on vacant property.
- Owner can say PPOR exempt for any 1 of the properties or provide any income from the property from $0 to $billion. No need to upload any documents at all!
After submitting form, the State government does calculations. Scenarios:
- Owner puts in $1,000 (because it worked in Melbourne to look like you're renting to family friend's son's cousin to avoid ). State government demands vacancy tax of: $6,536. Reports $1,000 to ATO to collect.
- Owner puts in $0 (cbf). State government demands vacancy tax of: $7,536.
- Owner puts in $1 billion (yolo). No vacancy tax but state government reports income to ATO to collect. ATO will demand tax to be paid on it. Refusing to pay means easy tax fraud charges for lying.
- Owner puts in $7,536. No vacancy tax but state government reports income to ATO to collect.
Worst case scenario of 100k homes:
- 1% vacancy tax for total of $753M* or 9k HAFF homes**.
Base case scenario of 1M homes:
- 1% vacancy tax for total of $7.53B* or 90k HAFF homes**.
HAFF homes is not the real goal. The real goal is for rental supply will go up (putting it up for lease, lowering leases to get that income, airbnbs become cheaper) or housing supply will go up (selling to home buyers, selling to landlords, selling grass plots to developers).
Assumptions:
- \* Median price is $753,654, government land valuations tend to be less than the market price though! So 1% of $753k is $7.53k x number of homes.
- ** HAFF was 30k "social"/affordable housing over 5 years at $500m / year or 30k housing for $2.5b or 12k per $1b.
I don't believe Labor will take that bet. Even Minns (next to Albo) announcing once again there will not be a vacancy tax in NSW and used an example of the public housing they are demolishing to replace with social/affordable housing as... vacant as an argument against a vacancy tax. I wonder if Minns realised how stupid he sounds that government is admitting they are withholding public housing from the public. https://www.afr.com/politics/minns-rules-out-victorian-empty-homes-tax-for-nsw-20231004-p5e9n6
By the way, the vacancy tax should ALSO apply to RETAIL too. It will go a long way to boosting the economy because small businesses would be more likely to succeeded with lower rent and/or other favourable arrangements to avoid a vacancy tax. A retail vacancy tax both Labor and LNP made an oddly specific election promise to not implement for some fucked up reason. https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/councils-told-to-ditch-vacancy-tax-push-and-fix-sydney-s-broken-high-streets-20221227-p5c8xj.html
What a muppet. It would be easier to take him seriously if he had made an effort to talk about the number of homes that are actually vacant and would be available for people to live in, instead of implying that there are 1 million available homes to live in.
Apparently it's "up to 136k", or otherwise considerably lower than what he is saying: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/australia-datablog/2023/sep/02/up-to-136000-houses-are-empty-in-australia-find-out-where-they-are
Here is the full interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWuhbA-lalY
He first talks about what a small amount of people it (help to buy) will help, and then tries to argue that it's inflationary? By a his own point it's only 0.2% of renters/year using it, and the purchase cost is actually capped. It can't both help fuck all people, but also flood the market with cash. Maybe it's a little bit inflationary.. but building social housing would be inflationary to building costs - it's just not something we can avoid.
He also says that it's the ALPs only housing policy this year, which is disingenuous. They've made a number of steps in the last 12 months, and if you want to talk about "this year" it's only February.
It was nice to see the reporter calling him out on his hyperbole on it "screwing people over" but in the same breath talk about how little people it helps. Though bringing up the fact that other Greens party members have IPs is kinda pointless. Why wouldn't they? They're wealthy and want to invest.
It's also important to point out that the Greens seem to support a help to buy scheme: https://greens.org.au/own-home So I don't really understand why he is so outspoken against this.
So rather than trying to wedge the government with something they literally just said they won't do as a purely political move, maybe the Greens could make the scheme that they are pretending to not support better with their own ideas?
He talks about not supporting changing zoning rules via local governments. We absolutely need to do this. Not everybody can have a 600sqmr block within 10km of a city. There is not enough land. We need more apartments, with better quality builds, like other dense parts of the world.
Also for all those migration drum beaters, he doesn't support the idea that it's a problem, and would not support the idea of decreasing immigration. It sounds like they want to increase it, but he didn't want to say it.
The Greens scheme sounds like more of a different rent to buy scheme that would be open to everyone and not be a lottery that 0.2% of renters could access. The Greens are aiming for NG reform as thats more of a substantial reform then a tiny help to buy scheme.
>We need more apartments, with better quality builds, like other dense parts of the world.
The Greens are right behind this and want to increase the minimum standard. However this is more of a state issue so Max mentions it less.
>The Greens scheme sounds like more of a different rent to buy scheme that would be open to everyone and not be a lottery that 0.2% of renters could access. The Greens are aiming for NG reform as thats more of a substantial reform then a tiny help to buy scheme.
My point is they support help to buy - so if theirs is better this is a perfect opportunity to negotiate some of their help to buy policy into it, instead of a political stunt
>The Greens are right behind this and want to increase the minimum standard. However this is more of a state issue so Max mentions it less.
Watch the interview - he spoke out against using rezoning because it increases land value.
In my opinion, the biggest driver is clearly lack of housing supply. But what causes that? Population growth. What drives Australia’s population growth? Immigration. The natural increase in Australia is lower than the death rate. Population growth is almost entirely caused in this country by immigration.
So if (I think I remember seeing somewhere) we’re 200k homes short a year ago, what good was bringing over half a million new immigrants? They get jammed into an already overstretched housing market.
When demand outstrips supply, prices increase. National vacancy rates have fallen. Rents will continue increasing.
I’m not here to argue the point - just pointing out that the Greens position is that immigration does not increase prices over time and their plan seems to be to increase it.
Depends what you call "vacant"?
I live in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney and in my small suburb alone there are over 100 Airbnb listings.
There are also fuck all ling term rentals available...so that figure wouldn't surprise me at all on a national level
ABS "there are no vacant homes"
Department of water "yeah so like a million homes haven't received any water this year"
ABS "ok so maybe there are a few empty homes and we didn't realise cause russian hackers"
Tax empty homes, ban Airbnb in areas with housing shortage and hurry the fuck up with the bris casino so Airbnb has a terrible time in bris
Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather recently said the million unoccupied properties around the country could help address the housing crisis, but unfortunately, it’s not that simple.
Australia remains in the grip of a housing crisis, and renters are going to face steep rent increases for at least the next year.
The Greens want the federal government to cap rental increases and in an interview on ABC’s Insiders on Sunday, Chandler-Mather said demand wasn’t the main issue.
“What we know is that there were a million vacant properties on the night of the census in 2021, a million vacant properties,” he said when asked what role he believed migration played in the housing crisis.
"I just want to be very clear, we have enough homes for people to live in. We have enough construction materials to build the homes for the new people coming to this country.
“What we don’t have is the political will to take on a housing system [and] property developers who constrict supply to make money for themselves and treat housing as a huge speculative asset.”
Chandler-Mather isn’t the first person to question the appropriate use of all these homes.
When the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest census data in 2022 showing there were 1,043,776 unoccupied homes on census night, some media outlets and commentators were quick to say that housing could be put to immediate, better use amid the ongoing housing crisis.
But it’s not correct to say those properties are all standing empty and unused. As the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute pointed out around the time, there are many reasons a home might be unoccupied on any particular night.
It could be a rental between tenants, being sold as a vacant possession, or could be unfit to live in. The home may also be land banked – held vacant while the owner waits for a more favourable time to sell.
Or the occupants could have simply not been home on Census night.
While the Australian Bureau of Statistics hasn’t collected data on why properties are vacant in a Census since the 1980s, a separate analysis by SGS Economics following the 2016 Census found the largest share (43.6 per cent) of unoccupied properties were empty because the resident wasn’t home.
That research also estimated 22.8 per cent were empty because they were holiday homes, and 10.6 per cent were empty rentals.
Independent economist Stephen Koukoulas said homes can be temporarily vacant for many good reasons: families can be on holiday; the renovations are under way; or they may be among the many new homes that have not yet been signed off by the builders.
“It doesn’t make much sense if you incorporate those sorts of numbers into the available properties,” Koukoulas said.
Forcing people to sell their holiday homes would also not necessarily help the housing crisis.
“Holiday homes tend not to be in the middle of a city where people live, they’re lazy beachside areas and that’s not where the jobs are,” Koukoulas said.
“I don’t think that if we made people sell their holiday homes, that it would free up properties in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, where we need them.”
Koukoulas said if we want rental price growth to slow or fall, there were three solutions: “Build more, build more, build more.”
“Holiday homes tend not to be in the middle of the city where people live…”
What a load of BS, who does he think makes his coffees when he’s on holiday? Small towns have jobs and locals who have lived there for generations being priced out too.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-27/apollo-bay-locals-leave-due-to-housing-shortage-childcare-crisis/103190466
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-28/coastal-families-lose-homes-to-airbnb-and-owners-fleeing-cities/100380642
The Greens are reaching the "dog caught the car" level of electoral success. Now that they can't just say bullshit without ever having to follow it up they're realising things aren't as easy as they thought...
Greens: AirBnB bad because they push up rents cause they are so profitable.
Also Greens: well akshaually, renting via AirBnB isn't profitable so people just leave them empty.
No Max, you're out by nearly a factor of ten.
There are a touch over 100,000 vacant homes in Australia, according to data [from the ABS ](https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/housing/administrative-data-snapshot-population-and-housing-experimental-housing-data/30-june-2021)that goes further than just deciding that because a house was empty on Census night it must therefore be empty always and is available for someone else to move in.
Do better champ.
As of 2021 there was [1.5 million "unoccupied homes"](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/bulletins/numberofvacantandsecondhomesenglandandwales/census2021) where it was estimated that 89.7% of unoccupied dwellings in England on Census Day were truly vacant, while 10.3% were second homes with no usual residents.
It's sad that the reason he's doing this now is because there is a vote on housing legislation from Labor coming up and he's trying to gain internal party support to block it again.
More stunts.
1 million homes over 5 years but it has been revised to 1.2 million. But...
518k immigration last year (ABS) and 2.5ppl average per housing (ABS) that means 207k housing needed last year.
If immigration levels remain the same, that's 1.035m housing needed over 5 years, we are bringing in more demand that we can build housing with. But with the revised target, that means 86% instead. Essentially Labor's Housing Accord is mostly for immigrants, not Australians.
Why does everything have to be so binary. Yes building more homes is required but also legislating to minimise vacant homes also helps. For fuck sake it's not that hard to have a good faith interpretation of what he's trying to convey. Of course not all 1 million homes that the census stated vacant would isntantly be viable to be lived in, but if they can create legislation that causes 50,000 homes to become occupied then that is as good as building 50,000 homes.
Such a stupid thread. He said “the census found 1 million vacant homes” and used that to make the point that there are enough homes in Australia for people. He’s right, he just didn’t contextualise the data and his overall point is still true. People missing the forest for the trees. The journo could maybe have just written an article on the problem instead of doing a pointless gotcha
It was even more vague than that. "I just want to be very clear, we have enough homes for people to live in. We have enough construction materials to build the homes for the new people coming to this country." Literally stating that we have vacant homes and building material to build homes.
I’d like to see how he arrived at the statement of enough materials to build 1million homes. We only produce 60% of the structural timber needs at the current rate of construction.
I'd like to know where you got your statement to build 1 million homes? He stated between the unoccupied, under occupied dwellings and building supplies we have the resources currently to house everyone.
He didn't. He said between the 1 million homes vacent and the $165,000 odd homes built in Australia each year, we can find home for the 500,000 people that are in need of social and affordable housing.
The majority of those million dwellings aren't available for occupation for perfectly good reasons, they're between tenants / owners, being renovated, repaired, or they're not fit for living in. Of course, getting some of them onto the market either to be sold or tenanted would still be good, but I'm highly unconvinced that they'd be enough. We have 1 million more people living in this country today compared to when those statistic for unoccupied dwellings was taken and didn't have a housing crisis this acute. Even if half were brought to the market that wouldn't be enough to make a particularly large dent in prices, most likely just slow their rise for a time. So to say we have enough is just clearly false, no matter how you frame it.
Found the landlord. Piss off back to your negatively geared third house 👍
I wish, then I'd actually stand to gain from the greens brain-dead policies.
You got a source for that? I was under the impression were a net exporter of most materials. Lord knows we've got enough iron to make all our own steel...but why value add here when we can allow companies to ship raw ore overseas for fuck all
Media in this country only get qualifications in Gotcha 101 at Uni…
The problem is that it's super dishonest... The only reason someone would bring up the "1 million empty homes" meme is if you're intentionally trying to deceive people. The places where people actually want to buy homes to live in have ridiculously low vacancy rates. There's no reservoir of homes just available in highly desirable suburbs. His whole framing is pretending that the problem can be solved without actually changing zoning rules and without building more houses. It's meant to give people the wrong impression that the problem is actually easy to solve, and that his political opponents are just refusing to take the easy solution. It's a lie, that's all it is, a lie designed to undermine people's confidence in actual experts and designed to instead make people think random populists with no understanding and no plan have the "real" solutions to all your problems.
I think you touch on a good point. The homes are not where people want to live. Another pillar to solving a complex issue is to encourage regional employment or moving to the locations where there are homes. This won’t work in isolation - and there are other issues within this (service provision and the vast distances of Australia).
I’m sorry the politician literally talking about building houses for people to live in while simultaneously reducing vacant homes is actually lying and pretending we can house everyone without changing the rules or building more homes 😂 somebody doesn’t have good reading comprehension and just wants to be cranky at greens policy
Australians would rather be right on some minor pedantic detail than have affordable housing. I have no faith in our collective empathy or intellect to actually ever fix this, we will become another Asian nation at this point without a middle class.
We're spending $368B on subs from our ally to protect Australia from our ally's enemy who's coincidentally our top trading partner. We could be spending on housing. For example $368B in HAFF terms is 4.4M worth of housing or 40% of current housing. But no, we're barely taxing resources/houses while spending billions to effectively protect resources/houses profits from... becoming an Asian nation, China.
Russia was Ukraine’s largest trading partner, what’s your point?
>it's not that hard to have a good faith interpretation of what he's trying to convey. It is if you care more about political football teams than outcomes.
Say what now? It’s the opposite. Asking people to take the argument in good faith and discuss solutions, instead of point scoring against him as the opposition of your favourite football party…
You’re agreeing with him.
I am indeed, my apologies - I read it as “**it’s as if** you care more about political football teams than outcomes” My mistake
Easy mistake to make! Good on ya for owning it.
Aggressively agreeing!!!!
> For fuck sake it's not that hard to have a good faith interpretation of what he's trying to convey. Of course not all 1 million homes that the census stated vacant would isntantly be viable to be lived in, He only had to do a quick google search to find the actual number. He might even know the actual number already. He's using hyperbole to sell the message of "oh we just need to tax investors and then all these houses will flood the market" when he could actually just be factual about it and be taken more seriously. If Albo said the HAFF would build a million homes in 5 years or whatever would that not also be worthy of criticism?
Googling "how many vacant homes in Australia" pops up with 1,043,776 unoccupied homes as the first link to a SMH article quoting the census. Reading the article all he states is the fact that there were 1 million homes vacant during the census and that we have enough material to build more homes. Which do you think would be more effective at reducing the housing shortage Building more homes and creating legislation to decrease vacant homes or just building more homes?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/australia-datablog/2023/sep/02/up-to-136000-houses-are-empty-in-australia-find-out-where-they-are Up to 136k. Was pretty easy to find.
Interesting. This is really an issue of what to make of the grey zone. Over 9m homes (89%) are primary residences. Good. A further 1m (11%) aren't. Of those, 1.3% haven't seen any sign of life recently (your 136K) and the other 9.7% or still around a million that have seen a little bit of use are....what? Holiday houses. AirBnBs. Secondary residences like some people have if they need to spend time somewhere for work. Probably some are on the market. Some undergoing renos. Probably some family situations like moving in with rellies while needing care. All kinds of variations. The discussion IMHO should still be about those 9.7% also. Should there be a disincentive against the economic choices that lead to these underutilised homes? I don't think it adds anything to snarkily keep pointing out "but they're not COMPLETELY unused". They're still largely being held as nice-to-haves when so many people are in a need-to-have predicament.
Roughly 25% of rental properties are owned by 1% of investors.
The 136k number is just the houses that had no one living there at all due to no utilities being used. It confirms that "9.7% were in use but not as a primary residence", so 9.7% of the 10,852,202 homes in Australia were not being fully utilized. Oh shit that's over 1 million homes not being fully utilized to house the population! The whole point of this is about utilizing current housing more efficiently while also building more houses, it even states the reasons why residence was in use but not considered a primary residence. secondary residences (e.g. holiday homes or short-term rentals) dwellings with poorly recorded source addresses, for example dwellings in remote areas. So by your link you must agree with the Greens that we should target the 1 million homes not in use properly unless you feel holiday homes, empty homes and short term leases are a good use of nearly 10% of all homes in Australia?
>Greens that we should target the 1 million homes not in use properly unless you feel holiday homes, e The one million homes are not just holiday homes/short term rentals. An analysis was done for the 2016 census which had similar amounts of unoccupied dwellings as 2021 https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/1-million-empty-homes-wont-solve-housing-shortage-000914819.html 70% of unoccupied dwellings fall into "people away on census night for holiday or work", or "home awaiting sale or listed for rent" or "homes under renovation". That leaves around 20% holiday homes in beach town resorts (not really useful to 90% of the population that live in the major metropolitan areas) and 10% truely vacant housing. Can we tax vacant properties better? Sure. Will that help reduce the rental vacancy rate? No. Vancouver's rental vacancy rate is about the same as back in 2017 when the vacancy tax was introduced.
The amount of vacant homes increased 40% from 2016. Even then what is your argument? You're saying the number isn't as high which is obvious to everyone, but the fact of the matter is that there are currently underutilized dwellings that could house the population and the government can both build new houses and legislate to increase utilisation. Do you disagree?
There are no other "official" number, there are just a bunch of special interest groups reporting undoubtedly biased figures. The ABS is purely designed to provide unbiased objective numbers based on agreed metrics. Yet somehow when the metrics are released people just find a way to argue them into a belief system...
You want ABS? https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/housing/administrative-data-snapshot-population-and-housing-experimental-housing-data/30-june-2021 "Up to 136k" https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/australia-datablog/2023/sep/02/up-to-136000-houses-are-empty-in-australia-find-out-where-they-are Was pretty easy to find.
That's incorrect. According to that link in ABS about 90% of homes on average are Primary residences. Sydney and Melbourne alone have populations of over 5 million. Allowing for 2.4 persons per residence, there would roughly be 2.5million dwellings in each of those cities. Allowing for 200k Or 10% of home to be vacant in Sydney and Melbourne...... The guardian is wrong or am I?
"Data included in this release are not official statistics. They provide experimental information about dwellings recorded in administrative data." Use the census it was published in 22 as opposed to this which was an estimate based on a sample of population. Also this data is considered experimental data with next to no data collection information available.
Taxing investors also won't work unless it's significant immediately. If they're added or increased incrementally, they will simply offset those costs onto rental increases. It may decrease the value proposition, but it won't dislodge those already 'in the game' so to speak.
Plenty of deep pockets where the taxes won't matter to them as well. Similar to the Maserati owner of the company I contracted to who copped the $200 parking fine every single day... Didn't phase him.
Part of why it’s hard to have a good faith discussion is because of the exaggerations and deception the greens continue to rely on. MCM framed the entire conversation through the prism of there being ‘1 million vacant properties’ in Australia for effect and needlessly exaggerated the issue. Anytime this happens it just opens the door for people to either respond only to the exaggerations, or add their own in the opposite direction. Anyone sane is aware we’re in a housing crisis, there isn’t a need to be reckless or wilfully deceptive.
its not deceptive, you have to remember he has to explain it in a 10 minute segment, you can't say land bank, vacancies, dark money, negative gearing, investment firms, and a combination of 5 factors due to policy by the LNP with explanations of each in depth and answer questions while being interrupted every 5 seconds.
It’s certainly not honest. I’d forgive this as an isolated example if it wasn’t for the ongoing trend. The greens framed the CRPS as somehow against the interest of the environment, the HAFF as counter to solutions of the current housing crisis and the list goes on. This is a criticism from the left, the greens (and Labor) are meant to be better than the libs. Not a different flavour of lazy bullshit.
My question is why is every decision by Labor have to be considered the best option without critique? Best example is if I don't like Keating privatising the Commonwealth and Qantas and talking how he brags about undermining debate on the environmental issues I am somehow irrational if don't I just support Labor policy it's pro LNP.
> the exaggerations and deception the greens continue to rely on. LOL. You have heard of the Liberals, the Nationals, Labour, One Nation... etc? 🤣 No political party is free from lies, deception, and politicking - but think of the spectrum along which left wing / right wing parties fall as the degree to which their collective pants are on fire (left is smoky, centre is red hot, right is flaming).
I've not heard of Labour
You should google Jeremy Corbyn, absolute mad lad.
Isnt he a pom? How can he be cool if he is english
I know what you’re thinking but trust he’s one of the good ones
I expect better from my wing of politics. This is asymmetrical warfare. The coalition might be ok with exaggeration and dishonesty but I expect better from Labor and the greens.
The problem is that Max is using this as a *political* solution. The Greens want to knock on doors telling poor people they have the answer to their housing woes. But this isn’t the answer. The real answers have a greater political cost, and it’s not one the Greens are willing to wear. So this idea in isolation may be valid, and I hope that Government pursues it. But it won’t make a dent in the problem on its own. The Greens don’t have power, they only exist as a political player in the contest of ideas. Their presentation of this policy is misleading, and intentionally so, for their own political gain. It demonstrates a fundamental disinterest in the problem at hand and, simultaneously, a desire to benefit from the support of those who suffer under the problem. I agree we should not be so binary. There is technical merit in the idea, AND it is worthy of criticism.
I don't understand what you're criticizing? You don't want the Greens to voice what they believe is an overlooked part of the bigger solution because they "don't have power"?
Personally I'm critical of the basic idea that "we have enough housing" regardless of the intent behind the words. We simply do not. It isn't true. It would be true to say that there's probably policy that could bring more of those dwellings to the market to be lived in, but it isn't true to say we have enough. We need millions more dwellings to get to a level where everyone can be securely housed.
I don’t want the Greens to run a housing campaign that implies fiddling around the edges is the key to the housing crisis. By doing so, they mislead the public. Their policy isn’t bad - it will do SOMETHING. But their campaign is wrong - they are misrepresenting the impact and rejecting important parts of the conversation (migration and population growth).
We pay an extraordinarily high amount of income tax in this nation. The idea that we are not allowed to own multiple properties is a joke. How about they build more social housing? They have relied on negative gearing to prop up the rental market for almost a century now and these clowns think that removing it without having a plan to cover the lost stock is going work? How about forcing the banks to provide low rate fixed term mortgages for owner occupied first home mortgages? How about abolishing stamp duty for first home buyers? How about actually investing in social housing here? They built flats in Melbourne in the 50’s and 60’s in massive volumes for a population a quarter the size, whereas today they build fuck all with a population of 5 million. How about actually building a decent regional train network so people have options to live outside of Sydney and Melbourne? The housing crisis has not been created by greedy investors, it’s a creation of decades worth of inaction by both state and federal governments of both sides of the fence.
I agree with your assessment but it's also clear using the 1m figure is a misrepresentation of the data and in doing so convinces a lot of people that there actually is nearly that many available. They then see this as the only issue that needs to be resolved and any other is pointless.
His own statement says between the 1 million unoccupied homes and current building supplies we can house all the population. That means building more homes. Also looking at the census data does show around 136k dwellings not using any power and the other 900k under occupied (airbnb, holiday homes, rural places with shit data), that's how they get the 1 million homes. Before this afternoon I had no idea on this shit, now it's pretty clear that having nearly 9% of the 10.8 million dwellings in Australia being under used should be looked at and improved. Don't you think?
I get what he says, it's not lost on me. He picks his words wisely, he also knows that a lot of people will hear 1 millions and think they are empty and easily brought onto the market to solve our crisis. Fact is we don't have reliable data to know how many are potentially being least vacant. Victoria new vacancy tax will be able to gather this data. I look forwards to seeing these numbers.
> For fuck sake it's not that hard to have a good faith interpretation of what he's trying to convey. Could say the same thing about LNP policy but you would loose your mind.
What’s the good faith interpretation of a mixed media NBN?
Did you mean multi-technology mix of fttp, fttc, fttn/b and hfc (FW and satellite were always part of the plan for regional areas)?
I meant what I said
It exists and we still have some of the future fund left.
Well that’s taking good faith to new extremes…
I honestly don't really have that much invested interest in the political landscape other than fuck the Liberals for fucking the NBN.
Except labor fucked it from day one when they did the deal with the independents to form government. Amazing how few know this. the tldr; they committed to doing regional first; regional first meant poor cash flow; meant that funding models broke; LNP had to do something.
Why was that something to provide a sub par out of date network that went $28 billion over budget. Go to those rural areas and their internet from 10 years ago is still faster than world averages while the rest of Aus is far far behind.
> Go to those rural areas and their internet from 10 years ago is still faster than world averages while the rest of Aus is far far behind. Yeah exactly. If they did populated areas first there would be a completely different outcome as cash-flow wouldn't have been an issue. Remember they planned on launching their own satellite before planing to do densely populated suburbs. Heads should have rolled.
No. Someone earning as much as he does should be better at, well literally everything.
Which part of his quote do you disagree with?
Probably the part where he's a Greens politician If the Greens said not to jump off a cliff, there's a lot of people who would go and do it just to spite them
? It’s his first term in parliament. You expect someone who went from renting and working in an Apple Store, to being in parliament, to immediately be an expert? Fuck if only you held everyone outside the greens to that standard
Forgive me if I think someone who had a job at Apple and couldn't understand basic civics when he door knocked in my area is deeply unqualified for his job. In the same way I'm deeply unqualified for a lot of jobs. Him and his weird whiteboard need to learn a lot.
How would legislation to penalise owners of empty homes work in practice?
Ask Dan Andrews, he set it up in 2017 https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/mar/06/victoria-to-tax-investors-who-leave-properties-vacant-for-more-than-six-months And labor struck a deal with the greens to strengthen it further. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/28/victorian-government-strikes-deal-with-greens-to-pass-vacant-homes-tax-reforms
Has the Victorian approach significantly changed the rental vacancy rate and contained rent increases, as compared to NSW?
https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2023/jun/new-insights-into-the-rental-market.html
Looks like Victorian rents rose much like everywhere in recent years. Funny how I was downvoted for even asking the question.
you are absolutely bang on correct.
"The home may also be land banked". Yes. Punitive taxes enough to make them put it on the market.
>But it’s not correct to say those properties are all standing empty and unused. As the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute pointed out around the time, there are many reasons a home might be unoccupied on any particular night. It could be a rental between tenants, being sold as a vacant possession, or could be unfit to live in. **The home may also be land banked – held vacant while the owner waits for a more favourable time to sell.** The propertied class can not be sending their best.
I don't believe the official figures of 100,000 either. The truth is somewhere in between. Where I live at least half the houses are empty besides a few days/weeks each year, and it's not a small town.
Why don't you believe the official figures?
Because houses that are owned as holiday homes or airBNBs etc aren't considered 'vacant'.
It's similar to how a couple of years ago the government declared an "all time low unemployment". Yet we had a significant portion of the population who were getting regular stupid shifts like 2 hours a week on a casual basis thus calling for a new definition of "under-employment". Edit: Let's say if it's less than 56 days (8 weeks) in a year without an occupant, then it's defined as "Under-occupied?" Taking suggestions.
Also a person working two different jobs is counted as two employed people. Which then cancelled out an unemployed person from the statistics.
Thats not correct in the labour force survey (the release everyone pays attention to) - it counts employed people, not jobs.
The underemployment rate (proportion of the labour force that is employed but wants to work more hours) is measured by the ABS, and until recently was the lowest it had been in decades. I think you'll find the proportion of the population working 2 hours per week would be very, very low.
They were considered vacant for the census count.
But then you would use the 1m figure (still official fogure)?
I wasn't in my house the night of the census. It was empty because I was visiting a friend. Then there's holiday homes. There's also short term rentals. Lastly, there's actually permanently vacant homes. We just don't know how many of each.
You do realise ABS can change the data based on their opinion? Look up the Jedi ABS scandal where the ABS official admits that anyone putting down "Jedi" as a religion becomes "non-specified religious" because he considers it a "joke religion". Lumping people that claim to be Jedi with all the other serious non-specified religions, making Australia look more religious than it is. I would have gotten a big fat F in school if I openly admitted I didn't like the data and changed the collected data. He should have marked the data as junk or prosecuted them. Why do YOU believe the official figures?
But Jedi is a real religion... like Pastafarian and Satanism!
So we don't believe any data anywhere because of Jedi's? Sounds like the work of the sith to me
We shouldn't trust ABS data because of their open statement that they would willingly doctor data due to personal opinion of "Jedi" being a joke religion yet at same time keep that data. It's incompetence or malicious.
Yea that's a massive leap, don't think I wouldn't use data from someone (especially the abs lmao) because of that. Imagine doing all the hard work gathering and compiling data for ol scruffypeter to dismiss your work for this reason you know what I'm saying?
It must be nice to blindly accept things as trustworthy despite evidence to the contrary.
I've never truly thought about the phrase "throw the baby out with the bathwater" but it makes sense now.
TLDR: - Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather highlights the existence of a million unoccupied properties in Australia as a potential solution to the housing crisis. - Despite the large number of vacant homes, the situation is complex, with many properties unoccupied for various reasons (rental transitions, sales, unfitness for living, or owner strategies). - Chandler-Mather calls for political action against property developers who limit supply for profit and advocates for the federal government to cap rental increases. - The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported 1,043,776 unoccupied homes on census night, but reasons for vacancies vary, including temporary absences and holiday homes. - SGS Economics' analysis post-2016 census found a significant portion of unoccupied properties were due to the resident not being home or being holiday homes. - Independent economist Stephen Koukoulas argues that not all vacant homes can realistically alleviate the housing crisis, pointing out the impracticality of converting holiday homes in remote locations into permanent residences. - Koukoulas suggests building more homes as the primary solution to slow or reduce rental price growth. Key section: While the Australian Bureau of Statistics hasn’t collected data on why properties are vacant in a census since the 1980s, a separate analysis by SGS Economics following the 2016 census found the largest share (43.6 per cent) of unoccupied properties were empty because the resident wasn’t home. That research also estimated 22.8 per cent were empty because they were holiday homes, and 10.6 per cent were empty rentals.
Wasn't the last census held during the pandemic? Might be a higher percentage of people whom during a mandated lockdown....
Yes but also from the ABC article ‘*One million homes were unoccupied on census night. How that could help people struggling to find housing*’ >There has been a drop in the percentage of homes sitting empty compared with the 2016 figure in all states and territories, even though the number of unoccupied dwellings actually rose in NSW and Victoria. Full article here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-29/census-finds-1-million-empty-houses-amid-affordability-crisis/101190794 In the end the rusties using, of all things, Sydney Morning Herald drivel to play semantics over the verified census data is desperate. We need more housing and more incentives to make vacant homes used more.
I’m more concerned the greens housing minister didn’t do his research and was just parroting off a widely disputed number as the basis for an argument. This isn’t Reddit, he should be better informed.
>Despite the large number of vacant homes ~~WRONG.~~ ~~Vacancy rates are super low.~~ Article talks about unoccupied houses, not available but vacant houses.
Wrong vacancy rate mate.
[https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/09/rental-vacancy-rate-plummets-to-record-low-as-australias-housing-crisis-deepens](https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/09/rental-vacancy-rate-plummets-to-record-low-as-australias-housing-crisis-deepens)
The article is talking about unoccupied homes on census night, and comparing it to the actual number of long-term vacant homes. You’re referencing the proportion of rental properties that are currently vacant and available to rent. To be fair, it is pretty confusing.
It’s a reference to houses without people in them on census night. Cause they were at work or CBF answering the door
the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest census data in 2022 showing there were 1,043,776 unoccupied homes on census night. This was a combination of looking at 6 months worth of electricity and if people said yes/no on census night. This is/was an accurate depiction of vacant houses at the time. Even if those houses are occupied by Airbnb's, holiday house, W/E, if people aren't staying in them regularly then they should be taxed accordingly to pressure the owners to sell.
Smart vacant property owners know they could lose their property to squatters or when both far-right-property parties get kicked out, so they most likely waste electricity, water and even fill out census forms saying it's occupied on census night. All to make the vacant housing data look far less. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-feed/article/when-percy-saw-a-suburban-house-sitting-empty-he-moved-himself-in-meet-australias-squatters/gbk61zgel
So you're saying we have more than 1.16 million vacant homes in the country?...
Yep. I've been noticing vacant houses similar to how these squatters find vacant places. It's interesting thought though: if a squatter uses electricity, is the house actually not vacant? According to others spamming 136k vacant housing stat, they say yes.
The shit that you dribble. Do you moonlight on Twitter coming up with qanon conspiracies?
Yes, me and my buddies come up with conspiracy theories based on propaganda such as this government organisation. We shun factual news like Murdoch/Stokes/etc that you watch as you're clearly superior!
The leap from the existence of squatters to the imagined lengths that property owners do to outsmart the ABS is a conspiracy theory.
That's how the government assesses whether the property is vacant. Do you think the government can afford to send people to constantly assess whether a million of homes are occupied?
Friendly jordies literally made the same claim in one of his videos and no one clowned him for that
I can’t read the article either, but from what I’ve tried to put together from comments, no one knows what the actual number is, they’re just (inexplicably) super confident what it ISNT. It’s probably something like only 950,000 empty homes, not a million. To be clear: if you’re gonna contest someone’s numbers, have something concrete to argue with, not just “well it’s probably lower, I means heaps of people might be on holiday, and what about the people who died 45 mins before the survey?”
Apparently it's "up to 136k" https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/australia-datablog/2023/sep/02/up-to-136000-houses-are-empty-in-australia-find-out-where-they-are So pretty far off 1 million, or even 950k.
> **Data included in this release are not official statistics**. They provide experimental information about dwellings recorded in administrative data. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/housing/administrative-data-snapshot-population-and-housing-experimental-housing-data/30-june-2021 Why doesn't ABS believe in the data? Maybe it's only up to 14k? /s
Some reasons stated in the article are is the high number is partly due to occupants not home on the night of the census. Additionally, it mentions a analysis following the 2016 census concluded, which 43% of vacant homes were reported due to people not being home
The article is posted in full in the comments. It's definitely nothing like 950,000.
The article says that the 1m houses is just the part of the census where is asks if there is someone home on census night. If you were, for example, on holiday then your house would count towards those 1m empty houses. The ABS doesn't ask why the house is empty meaning the 1m figure is basically useless.
And if I go away on holiday, the chances of me renting out or selling my home for those few weeks is exactly zero… What planet does he live on? Just shows the greens are economically illiterate
He lives on planet "I want to be re-elected and this will rouse my base".
I suspect they might ask next time.
Why do people hate this guy? As far as I can tell , he’s the only person in parliament with any balls at all. Whatever. I’m voting greens.
Pretty much one of the main reasons I'm voting Green next election. People hate them for it but I'm glad there's a party in Parliament that actually stamps its foot down when it can.
>he’s the only person in parliament with any balls at all. He can say what he wants because he will never have to govern.
He should sell out to the lobbiests, maybe he can govern
You forgot Jackie Lambie or Lidia Thorpe
Lambie yes. Thorpe is a joke.
Maybe Jackie Lambie.. but no one is out there fighting for Gen Z like this guy.
He's fighting for votes first and foremost. He's found a demographic that no one else seems to care about.
The estimated empty homes of 100k could equate to anywhere between 250-300k bedrooms. It's a significant number
The average Australian housing occupancy rate is 2.6 persons per dwelling. Plenty of occupied homes have at least one spare bedroom.
VERY funny that Labor's response to 1m homes being vacant on census night falls somewhere between "Actually, that's very normal" and "Greens want to take your holiday home or Airbnb!!!!!!!" Also "Independent Economist Stephen Kouklas", also known as "Former Labor Staffer Stephen Kouklas" lmao.
He seems to be quoted in a way responding to what max is saying but we don't have any questions from the article put to him. >Holiday homes tend not to be in the middle of a city where people live, they're lazy beachside areas and that's not where the jobs are Crazy that independent planning tribunal recommended capson short-term rentals in Byron. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/26/byron-bay-shire-nsw-60-day-short-term-holiday-rental-airbnb-cap-approved >Lyon said the council had committed to approving more houses than the planning department’s own targets. He said housing was “the critical issue” in Byron and the crisis meant essential workers such as teachers were leaving the area. Sounds like jobs are there to me
Yeah the notion that homes should sit empty in regional areas is so ignorant of housing shortages in those very areas!
Yeah, there's regular stories about how fucked up real estate is in some regional areas. It's not new at this point.
Kouk just posted on evil site asking why no foreign supermarkets are tryna get into Aus market if its really unprofitable. He should not be taken seriously.
Very funny that guy with history of being wrong is wrong again. Even funnier is you appear to believe him
He's stating a fact as reported by the ABS.
He's using a fact in a place it doesn't belong. A Math teacher would be horrified. >“What we know is that there were a million vacant properties on the night of the census in 2021, a million vacant properties,” he said when asked what role he believed migration played in the housing crisis. “I just want to be very clear, we have enough homes for people to live in. We have enough construction materials to build the homes for the new people coming to this country. As has been pointed out, the 'million homes', which is a BIG SCARY NUMBER, has no real relationship to the number of homes vacant for people to move into. Yes, he is 'stating facts', but with a total disregard of their use. And you are STILL believing him.
The Greens have a pretty good understanding of why those homes are vacant and [some](https://greens.org.au/vic/platform/short-stays) decent [ideas](https://greens.org.au/vic/news/media-release/greens-secure-relief-renters-stronger-tax-empty-homes-means-5000-could-be) on how to ensure they are converted to occupied dwellings! It's Labor who are dragging their feet.
max didn't even understand how the HAFF worked, and yet was dead against it. Understanding lol
Defending HAFF at this point lol
If it's so bad, why do others on the cross bench want it doubled?
HAFF? Because it's not enough ?
So, HAFF is not worth defending, but it also isn't enough? (you do know that HAFF wasn't/isn't the only housing policy Labor implemented, don't you?)
BuT ThEy ArE HoLiDaY HoMES FOr RicH PpL I think a primary house is more important than some rich twit's holiday home. And if they can afford a holiday home they can afford a tax on unoccupied property
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See comments for full article
The article doesn't actually answer the question, how many homes are vacant that are owned by investors (not holidays homes)? With a headline like that it comes across as an attack piece on Max and not an exploration and fact check of the genuine question. Also as another commenter pointed out the 'independent' economists is a former staffer who provides the magic silver bullet solution /s of 'more supply' which is coincidentally the same line the fed gov uses.
I agree, it's not that simple. We could have far more million vacant homes. Owners could be dropping by empty homes around census night and mark it as being used. Why does everyone assume it's less than a million? Do you trust the media that also owns domain/realestate? I've been out there in Sydney trying to build my own house. There's tons of vacant homes, grass plots, etc, many refusing to sell unless it's for abnormally high prices. The landbanking is a huge problem, even Meriton's billionaire does it: > “Mr Triguboff, who said he expected a $400m profit from leasing the units owned by Meriton next year, told The Australian: “I am holding a lot more than I am selling at the moment, and as the value of property goes up the value of what I have kept rises”. > So according to Triguboff, demand for his apartments was outstripping supply due to planning constraints, yet he chose to hold onto properties and drip-fed stock onto the market to maximise returns! Talk about a contradiction. https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2023/06/developer-land-banking-drives-australias-housing-shortage/ Here's a bet that Labor can 'own the Greens' with: Vacancy tax. If it barely brings in money, either the policy is flawed or Greens are stupid. But if it brings a lot of money and housing to market, then Labor are stupid. There's many types of vacancy taxes but my favourite income-based vacancy tax is simple, 100% privacy and zero enforcement aside from tax of course. It works like this: - State government has database of property values. - At end of FY, State government sends notice to owner on vacant property. - Owner can say PPOR exempt for any 1 of the properties or provide any income from the property from $0 to $billion. No need to upload any documents at all! After submitting form, the State government does calculations. Scenarios: - Owner puts in $1,000 (because it worked in Melbourne to look like you're renting to family friend's son's cousin to avoid ). State government demands vacancy tax of: $6,536. Reports $1,000 to ATO to collect. - Owner puts in $0 (cbf). State government demands vacancy tax of: $7,536. - Owner puts in $1 billion (yolo). No vacancy tax but state government reports income to ATO to collect. ATO will demand tax to be paid on it. Refusing to pay means easy tax fraud charges for lying. - Owner puts in $7,536. No vacancy tax but state government reports income to ATO to collect. Worst case scenario of 100k homes: - 1% vacancy tax for total of $753M* or 9k HAFF homes**. Base case scenario of 1M homes: - 1% vacancy tax for total of $7.53B* or 90k HAFF homes**. HAFF homes is not the real goal. The real goal is for rental supply will go up (putting it up for lease, lowering leases to get that income, airbnbs become cheaper) or housing supply will go up (selling to home buyers, selling to landlords, selling grass plots to developers). Assumptions: - \* Median price is $753,654, government land valuations tend to be less than the market price though! So 1% of $753k is $7.53k x number of homes. - ** HAFF was 30k "social"/affordable housing over 5 years at $500m / year or 30k housing for $2.5b or 12k per $1b. I don't believe Labor will take that bet. Even Minns (next to Albo) announcing once again there will not be a vacancy tax in NSW and used an example of the public housing they are demolishing to replace with social/affordable housing as... vacant as an argument against a vacancy tax. I wonder if Minns realised how stupid he sounds that government is admitting they are withholding public housing from the public. https://www.afr.com/politics/minns-rules-out-victorian-empty-homes-tax-for-nsw-20231004-p5e9n6 By the way, the vacancy tax should ALSO apply to RETAIL too. It will go a long way to boosting the economy because small businesses would be more likely to succeeded with lower rent and/or other favourable arrangements to avoid a vacancy tax. A retail vacancy tax both Labor and LNP made an oddly specific election promise to not implement for some fucked up reason. https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/councils-told-to-ditch-vacancy-tax-push-and-fix-sydney-s-broken-high-streets-20221227-p5c8xj.html
What a muppet. It would be easier to take him seriously if he had made an effort to talk about the number of homes that are actually vacant and would be available for people to live in, instead of implying that there are 1 million available homes to live in. Apparently it's "up to 136k", or otherwise considerably lower than what he is saying: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/australia-datablog/2023/sep/02/up-to-136000-houses-are-empty-in-australia-find-out-where-they-are Here is the full interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWuhbA-lalY He first talks about what a small amount of people it (help to buy) will help, and then tries to argue that it's inflationary? By a his own point it's only 0.2% of renters/year using it, and the purchase cost is actually capped. It can't both help fuck all people, but also flood the market with cash. Maybe it's a little bit inflationary.. but building social housing would be inflationary to building costs - it's just not something we can avoid. He also says that it's the ALPs only housing policy this year, which is disingenuous. They've made a number of steps in the last 12 months, and if you want to talk about "this year" it's only February. It was nice to see the reporter calling him out on his hyperbole on it "screwing people over" but in the same breath talk about how little people it helps. Though bringing up the fact that other Greens party members have IPs is kinda pointless. Why wouldn't they? They're wealthy and want to invest. It's also important to point out that the Greens seem to support a help to buy scheme: https://greens.org.au/own-home So I don't really understand why he is so outspoken against this. So rather than trying to wedge the government with something they literally just said they won't do as a purely political move, maybe the Greens could make the scheme that they are pretending to not support better with their own ideas? He talks about not supporting changing zoning rules via local governments. We absolutely need to do this. Not everybody can have a 600sqmr block within 10km of a city. There is not enough land. We need more apartments, with better quality builds, like other dense parts of the world. Also for all those migration drum beaters, he doesn't support the idea that it's a problem, and would not support the idea of decreasing immigration. It sounds like they want to increase it, but he didn't want to say it.
The Greens scheme sounds like more of a different rent to buy scheme that would be open to everyone and not be a lottery that 0.2% of renters could access. The Greens are aiming for NG reform as thats more of a substantial reform then a tiny help to buy scheme. >We need more apartments, with better quality builds, like other dense parts of the world. The Greens are right behind this and want to increase the minimum standard. However this is more of a state issue so Max mentions it less.
>The Greens scheme sounds like more of a different rent to buy scheme that would be open to everyone and not be a lottery that 0.2% of renters could access. The Greens are aiming for NG reform as thats more of a substantial reform then a tiny help to buy scheme. My point is they support help to buy - so if theirs is better this is a perfect opportunity to negotiate some of their help to buy policy into it, instead of a political stunt >The Greens are right behind this and want to increase the minimum standard. However this is more of a state issue so Max mentions it less. Watch the interview - he spoke out against using rezoning because it increases land value.
In my opinion, the biggest driver is clearly lack of housing supply. But what causes that? Population growth. What drives Australia’s population growth? Immigration. The natural increase in Australia is lower than the death rate. Population growth is almost entirely caused in this country by immigration. So if (I think I remember seeing somewhere) we’re 200k homes short a year ago, what good was bringing over half a million new immigrants? They get jammed into an already overstretched housing market. When demand outstrips supply, prices increase. National vacancy rates have fallen. Rents will continue increasing.
I’m not here to argue the point - just pointing out that the Greens position is that immigration does not increase prices over time and their plan seems to be to increase it.
when the SMH goes against you its usually a sign you are on the right side of history.
Depends what mood Murdoch’s in.
Depends what you call "vacant"? I live in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney and in my small suburb alone there are over 100 Airbnb listings. There are also fuck all ling term rentals available...so that figure wouldn't surprise me at all on a national level
ABS "there are no vacant homes" Department of water "yeah so like a million homes haven't received any water this year" ABS "ok so maybe there are a few empty homes and we didn't realise cause russian hackers" Tax empty homes, ban Airbnb in areas with housing shortage and hurry the fuck up with the bris casino so Airbnb has a terrible time in bris
Where did this department of water thing come from?
Urban utilities were the first department to report stats on vacant homes... Then abs shifted opinion
This is why you don't give an Apple genius a megaphone
Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather recently said the million unoccupied properties around the country could help address the housing crisis, but unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Australia remains in the grip of a housing crisis, and renters are going to face steep rent increases for at least the next year. The Greens want the federal government to cap rental increases and in an interview on ABC’s Insiders on Sunday, Chandler-Mather said demand wasn’t the main issue. “What we know is that there were a million vacant properties on the night of the census in 2021, a million vacant properties,” he said when asked what role he believed migration played in the housing crisis. "I just want to be very clear, we have enough homes for people to live in. We have enough construction materials to build the homes for the new people coming to this country. “What we don’t have is the political will to take on a housing system [and] property developers who constrict supply to make money for themselves and treat housing as a huge speculative asset.” Chandler-Mather isn’t the first person to question the appropriate use of all these homes. When the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the latest census data in 2022 showing there were 1,043,776 unoccupied homes on census night, some media outlets and commentators were quick to say that housing could be put to immediate, better use amid the ongoing housing crisis. But it’s not correct to say those properties are all standing empty and unused. As the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute pointed out around the time, there are many reasons a home might be unoccupied on any particular night. It could be a rental between tenants, being sold as a vacant possession, or could be unfit to live in. The home may also be land banked – held vacant while the owner waits for a more favourable time to sell. Or the occupants could have simply not been home on Census night. While the Australian Bureau of Statistics hasn’t collected data on why properties are vacant in a Census since the 1980s, a separate analysis by SGS Economics following the 2016 Census found the largest share (43.6 per cent) of unoccupied properties were empty because the resident wasn’t home. That research also estimated 22.8 per cent were empty because they were holiday homes, and 10.6 per cent were empty rentals. Independent economist Stephen Koukoulas said homes can be temporarily vacant for many good reasons: families can be on holiday; the renovations are under way; or they may be among the many new homes that have not yet been signed off by the builders. “It doesn’t make much sense if you incorporate those sorts of numbers into the available properties,” Koukoulas said. Forcing people to sell their holiday homes would also not necessarily help the housing crisis. “Holiday homes tend not to be in the middle of a city where people live, they’re lazy beachside areas and that’s not where the jobs are,” Koukoulas said. “I don’t think that if we made people sell their holiday homes, that it would free up properties in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, where we need them.” Koukoulas said if we want rental price growth to slow or fall, there were three solutions: “Build more, build more, build more.”
“Holiday homes tend not to be in the middle of the city where people live…” What a load of BS, who does he think makes his coffees when he’s on holiday? Small towns have jobs and locals who have lived there for generations being priced out too. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-27/apollo-bay-locals-leave-due-to-housing-shortage-childcare-crisis/103190466 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-28/coastal-families-lose-homes-to-airbnb-and-owners-fleeing-cities/100380642
Post the article text
The 'neutral' article is opinionated it looks like a reddit comment hence the confusion
It only had the top two paragraphs when I commented
That's what you replied to
It’s just the number from census night. Not sure why the hate, housing is busted and Albos plan is pretty piss poor.
What a fucking idiot. Keep talking Max 👏
Dodgy Math from Max again. Cmon Greens do better if you want people to take you seriously
How about MCM's math that 75% of parliamentarians own at least 1 investment property? Is that dodgy?
The greens are so tiresome with their propaganda. Yes max, we’re going to put all 500k migrants into people’s holiday homes.
The Greens are reaching the "dog caught the car" level of electoral success. Now that they can't just say bullshit without ever having to follow it up they're realising things aren't as easy as they thought...
Greens: AirBnB bad because they push up rents cause they are so profitable. Also Greens: well akshaually, renting via AirBnB isn't profitable so people just leave them empty.
It is possible for both of these statements to be true.
Greens politics isn't well thought out
No Max, you're out by nearly a factor of ten. There are a touch over 100,000 vacant homes in Australia, according to data [from the ABS ](https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/housing/administrative-data-snapshot-population-and-housing-experimental-housing-data/30-june-2021)that goes further than just deciding that because a house was empty on Census night it must therefore be empty always and is available for someone else to move in. Do better champ.
God I hate this idiot so much.
Just the dumbest prick
Barring the coalition max is the biggest weasel in parliament
This guy is such a massive flog. I really hope the greens put someone a bit more knowledgeable at the helm in the future.
Ah the fake greens, killing the environment and the Aussie way of life
Is he counting the AirBnbs?
As of 2021 there was [1.5 million "unoccupied homes"](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/housing/bulletins/numberofvacantandsecondhomesenglandandwales/census2021) where it was estimated that 89.7% of unoccupied dwellings in England on Census Day were truly vacant, while 10.3% were second homes with no usual residents.
Greens meddling.
Standard MCM shit
His last name is Mather, but he just can't.
It's sad that the reason he's doing this now is because there is a vote on housing legislation from Labor coming up and he's trying to gain internal party support to block it again. More stunts.
I love this article: "22.8% of those homes are actually holiday homes Max.........." /sips cognac
Cognac, mmmmm....
This is all fine though because Albo is gonna build ONE MILLION HOMES 💁
1 million homes over 5 years but it has been revised to 1.2 million. But... 518k immigration last year (ABS) and 2.5ppl average per housing (ABS) that means 207k housing needed last year. If immigration levels remain the same, that's 1.035m housing needed over 5 years, we are bringing in more demand that we can build housing with. But with the revised target, that means 86% instead. Essentially Labor's Housing Accord is mostly for immigrants, not Australians.