{"id":800502,"date":"2026-07-14T21:29:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T21:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/800502\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T21:29:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T21:29:18","slug":"ato-data-contradicts-labors-unsubstantiated-claim-that-hoarding-investors-are-to-blame-for-the-housing-affordability-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/800502\/","title":{"rendered":"ATO data contradicts Labor’s unsubstantiated claim that hoarding investors are to blame for the housing affordability crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Economists and housing analysts have spent years warning that the post-pandemic surge in rents would become a full-blown affordability crisis unless governments tackled the underlying shortage of homes.<\/p>\n

The recent Cotality figures show those warnings have become reality.<\/p>\n

The national median rent has climbed to more than $700 a week, consuming 34 per cent of average pre-tax full-time earnings, up from less than 28 per cent five years ago.<\/p>\n

In just half a decade, the cost of renting has risen by more than $200 a week, twice as fast as average incomes, pushing the average tenant beyond the widely accepted housing-stress threshold of 30 per cent of income.<\/p>\n

The Treasurer now faces a simple question.<\/p>\n

\"Jim<\/p>\n

Having been repeatedly warned about the causes of the crisis, why has he persisted with policies that treat its symptoms while making so little progress on the underlying shortage?<\/p>\n

And why, at a time like this, would he alter the tax regime in ways likely to frighten away potential landlords?<\/p>\n

With the national vacancy rate at a historically low 1.6 per cent, the evidence of a supply shortage is irrefutable.<\/p>\n

Chalmers has paid little more than lip service to rental affordability.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, decisions taken by the Albanese government have steadily made the problem worse.<\/p>\n

The arrival of roughly one million additional temporary migrants has increased demand, particularly in the major capital cities and at the cheaper end of the market, where international students, temporary workers and people on bridging visas compete with low and middle-income Australians for scarce homes.<\/p>\n

This increase in demand is far from trivial.<\/p>\n

On a back-of-the-envelope assumption of three temporary residents to each dwelling, it would represent demand for more than 300,000 additional homes \u2014 a substantial addition to a rental market already suffering from chronic undersupply.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s rental market relies more heavily than those of many comparable countries on small private investors.<\/p>\n

Rather than large corporations owning most apartment buildings, ordinary Australians assume the risks of borrowing, buying and maintaining homes for rent.<\/p>\n

Successive governments have recognised the public benefit of this arrangement.<\/p>\n

Tax provisions encouraging investment helped bring private capital into rental housing while allowing households to build a nest egg for retirement.<\/p>\n

Every Australian able to provide independently for retirement and future health costs represents one less claim on future taxpayers.<\/p>\n

Under Anthony Albanese, that far-sighted approach has been displaced by a crude and politically convenient class war.<\/p>\n

Thrifty property investors have been recast as greedy members of an oppressive \u201casset class\u201d.<\/p>\n

Chalmers is fond of telling the story of a first-home buyer supposedly beaten at auction by a career investor, lured by extravagant tax advantages.<\/p>\n

The Australian Taxation Office data presents a very different picture.<\/p>\n

The typical landlord is not a property baron but a middle-income Australian with a single investment property.<\/p>\n

\"Chalmers-Albanese<\/p>\n

Around seven in ten investors hold only one rental-property interest, while roughly nine in ten hold no more than two.<\/p>\n

Those with portfolios of six or more exist (less than one per cent), but they are statistical anomalies, not the people who define the market.<\/p>\n

The ATO\u2019s latest taxation statistics continue to provide a detailed breakdown of rental-property interests held by individuals.<\/p>\n

The real problem is not that too many Australians are buying homes. It is that Australia is not building enough of them.<\/p>\n

In the rental market, as in the owner-occupier market, the fundamental driver of price is scarcity.<\/p>\n

Forcing landlords to sell to first-home buyers is therefore little more than a political sleight of hand.<\/p>\n

It may transfer an existing property from one tenure category to another, but it does not add a single dwelling to the national housing stock.<\/p>\n

Indeed, discouraging investment is likely to make the shortage worse. Investors do not merely buy existing properties.<\/p>\n

They provide much of the presale demand that allows apartment projects to obtain finance and proceed to construction.<\/p>\n

Reduce the expected return to investors and fewer projects become commercially viable.<\/p>\n

Construction falls, rental supply tightens further and the tenants supposedly being protected are left competing for fewer homes.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s policy is therefore not merely ineffective. It is internally contradictory. It claims to want more housing while attacking the capital required to build it.<\/p>\n

The contradiction arises from ideology: the false notion that housing is a contest between virtuous young renters and first-home buyers on one side and a pampered \u201casset class\u201d on the other. Yet investment is not the enemy of renters.<\/p>\n

\"Jim<\/p>\n

It is the means by which rental homes are financed, constructed and maintained.<\/p>\n

A government cannot wage war on housing investors without also waging war on housing investment.<\/p>\n

Not every centre-left government is as ideologically fixated when confronted by a structural housing shortage.<\/p>\n

In Canada, the government led by former central bank governor Mark Carney has taken steps to reward the construction of rental housing rather than punish the people financing it.<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s purpose-built rental housing rebate returns 100 per cent of the federal GST, or the federal portion of the harmonised sales tax, paid on qualifying new rental developments.<\/p>\n

It applies to qualifying new buildings and substantial conversions to rental accommodation, provided they contain at least four private apartments or at least ten private rooms or suites and meet long-term rental requirements.<\/p>\n

The economic logic is refreshingly straightforward.<\/p>\n

If Canada needs more rental homes, it should reduce the tax burden on people prepared to build them.<\/p>\n

Canada has also acted to curb excessive demand by sharply reducing the growth in its temporary population.<\/p>\n

Statistics Canada estimated there were about 2.68 million non-permanent residents at the beginning of January 2026, already down six per cent in a single quarter, with the decline in temporary residents becoming the principal reason for slower population growth.<\/p>\n

\"Chalmers<\/p>\n

The effect on the rental market has been significant.<\/p>\n

Canadian asking rents fell year-on-year throughout 2025.<\/p>\n

In December, the national average was C$2,074 a month, 3.1 per cent lower than a year earlier and C$100 below its level two years before.<\/p>\n

Australia is doing almost the reverse.<\/p>\n

The Albanese government has allowed population growth to outrun housing construction, imposed mounting costs and delays on development, and then blamed the resulting increase in rents on the investors whose capital the market needs.<\/p>\n

It is government by scapegoat.<\/p>\n

Young Australians are encouraged to believe their housing problems have been caused by older Australians with investment properties rather than by planning failure, excessive construction costs, infrastructure bottlenecks and a migration program disconnected from the number of homes being built.<\/p>\n

That may be effective politics in the short term.<\/p>\n

It gives the government a villain and invites younger voters to regard housing policy as an intergenerational struggle for spoils.<\/p>\n

Australia will not solve its rental crisis by declaring war on the people prepared to invest in rental housing. It will solve it only by making that investment worthwhile again.<\/p>\n

Until Chalmers abandons the class war and confronts the shortage, every supposed victory over the \u201casset class\u201d will be paid for by tenants through higher rents and fewer homes.<\/p>\n

Nick Cater is a senior fellow at the Menzies Research Centre and a regular contributor to Sky News Australia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Economists and housing analysts have spent years warning that the post-pandemic surge in rents would become a full-blown…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[17170,64,63,99,164],"class_list":["post-800502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-ato","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800502","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=800502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}