Economists react to the housing minister insisting house prices shouldn’t come down<\/a><\/p>\nLast month, Housing Minister Clare O’Neil told triple j that the government wasn’t trying to bring down house prices. The interview found a new life online this week, so we asked the experts what they think.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, data from research firm Cotality showed home values rose 1.1 per cent in October and 6.1 per cent across the year, citing a mix of government incentives, rate cuts, limited supply and a typical spring surge.<\/p>\n
Cotality’s head of research, Eliza Owen, said it was a “pretty surprising and exceptional month for price growth” largely driven by the “lower and middle” market segments, compared to an average monthly growth rate this year of 0.6 per cent.<\/p>\n
While the Coalition is still determining its housing policy, Senator Bragg wants the value of “entry-level” homes to drop by at least the rate it grew in October.<\/p>\n
Though a reduction in prices would boost affordability, experts also point out those already in the market would not want the value of their asset to fall.<\/p>\n
Given the expanded 5 per cent scheme, Ms Owen said “pragmatically” you would want prices to keep rising for those who had just bought, but the ultimate objective should be to see them fall.<\/p>\n
“They’ve tried to give first home buyers a leg-up into a rising market rather than bringing the market down to get more people in,” she said.<\/p>\n
Ms Owen said, given they had risen about 45 per cent in the last five years, there was “little” worry about owners landing in negative equity.<\/p>\n
Labor says scheme helps renters buy<\/p>\n
Responding to the fresh figures, the government pointed to previous Treasury advice that the policy could have a “very minor” impact on prices, instead saying supply and interest rates were bigger factors.<\/p>\n
However, Housing Minister Clare O’Neil acknowledged prices were “rising too fast”, saying it had been an issue for 40 years.<\/p>\n
“I think it’s not accurate to blame this on a policy that started about four weeks ago,” she told Channel Seven.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/e3132d86024b5767e7268c777df9d6dd\")
<\/p>\n
Clare O’Neil told the ABC in November that the government did not believe house prices should go backwards. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)<\/p>\n
In selling the expanded scheme, Labor has said it shaves years off the time it takes for someone to save for a deposit, an argument Prime Minister Anthony Albanese further prosecuted in Question Time on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Replying to a question from Liberal member for Monash Mary Aldred, the prime minister said more than 1,000 people in her electorate alone had benefited from the scheme.<\/p>\n
“I hope she writes to them and says that somehow it’s inappropriate that you are buying your home \u2014 what you should have done is just stay paying off someone else’s mortgage rather than pay off your own mortgage,” he told parliament.<\/p>\n
The head of Deloitte Access Economics, Pradeep Philip, said housing affordability needed to be tackled through income growth and more supply.<\/p>\n
‘Probably fair’ to limit the number of homes politicians own: Bragg<\/p>\n
Speaking to triple j Hack on Tuesday, Mr Bragg also looked favourably on the concept of restricting politicians to only owning one home, as he does.<\/p>\n
How many properties politicians own<\/a><\/p>\nThe prime minister’s seaside property purchase raised eyebrows, but many politicians have larger property holdings.<\/p>\n
He noted that in public office, individuals’ circumstances could be perceived as a conflict of interest.<\/p>\n
“It’s probably a fair rule,” he told listeners.<\/p>\n
The ABC has previously analysed the number of homes federal politicians own, with some owning as many as seven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The federal opposition’s housing spokesman, Andrew Bragg, says “entry-level” house prices need to fall, acknowledging it is a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":263673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[49394,103540,64,63,99,40141,91108,10930,7688],"class_list":{"0":"post-263672","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-affordability","9":"tag-andrew-bragg","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-business","13":"tag-clare-oneil","14":"tag-first-home-buyers","15":"tag-house-prices","16":"tag-housing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}