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The Sunshine State’s opposition party has promised a three-pronged attack to spur increased home ownership levels, tax relief, incentives, and unlock supply – and the state’s peak body is all for it.
Antonia Mercorella, chief executive officer at the Real Estate Institute of Queensland (REIQ), labelled the commitment as “welcome”.
She stressed the seemingly dead and buried great Australian home ownership is “unattainable for many”, a claim supported by data from Canstar which revealed the current trajectory of Australian home values would push home ownership completely out of first home buyers’ reach in the near future.
According to Ms Mercorella, difficulty in securing a home has increased, particularly in the last two decades, leading to “barely one in three Queenslanders aged 25 to 34 owning their property”.
Methods to boost supply couldn’t come at a better time, with the state’s rental population bursting at the seams, the REIQ CEO indicated the portion of Queensland’s population renting (36 per cent) is higher than the rest of the nations, with this figure showing no signs of slowing down.
Further to this, CoreLogic’s most recent Quarterly Rental Review, covering the three months to September 2023, found Brisbane’s vacancy rate is down at 1.1 per cent.
While nothing has been set in stone yet, Queensland opposition leader David Crisafulli declared “everything is on the table”, as he outlined his roadmap to facilitating more Queenslanders into home ownership.
This includes incentive models, working with local governments to deliver infrastructure, as well as tax reliefs. On top of this, should his party win power in 12 months’ time, Mr Crisafulli said the state would appoint Australia’s first minister for home ownership.
The party’s promises come against a backdrop of increased difficulty for young Queenslanders to enter home ownership, Ms Mercorella explained.
“We recognise that there is a generation of people out there who are watching the pace of the market and feeling disillusioned and concerned about being priced out,” she said.
“For those of us who have young adult children who are looking to buy their first home, I think it’s becoming increasingly difficult to convince them that home ownership is in fact an achievable and attainable goal,” she added.
While the dark cloud of home ownership woes looms large on the national horizon, Ms Mercorella declared any initiatives to increase Queenslanders entering home ownership as welcome.
A key battle ground of this, in her view, is the stamp duty front, with thresholds having “remained static for over a decade and First HomeBuilder Grants rarely applying to the regions”.
“All this while the stamp duty revenue taken by the state has almost tripled in that time,” she shared.
“Residential property is worth $1.7 trillion in Queensland, and it is time that it got its own area of focus in government,” she concluded.
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