The property industry has widely welcomed efforts to encourage more housing construction, but the head of one Australia’s biggest real estate firms has warned he fears rental homes would be lost from the market as a result of limiting scope for rent increases beyond the current one year timeline.
Latest Residential Tenancy Bond Authority figures show they held bonds for 706,892 homes at the end of the 2021-2022 financial year. were former rental homes.PropTrack economist Angus Moore said international examples showed rent controls could result in rental home maintenance suffering and in landlords exiting the market.
In Berlin, a five-year rent freeze implemented in 2020 ended a year later after a legal challenge. A study there indicated an up to 60 per cent reduction in rental listings, in part as landlords left homes untenanted while they awaited the outcome at court. The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute published a rent freeze review late last month that found while good in the short term, rent control had made life worse for tenants in the USA in the longer term.