Australia to triple fees on foreigners buying existing homes, penalise them if they leave properties empty
Australia triples fees on foreign buyers of existing homes to stem rental crisis
Unoccupied housing in growth areas needs to be taxed mercilessly.
And taxes on non-multifamily rental properties should also be physically painful for the owners.
How many properties are currently affected by this? 6 times the taxes is mentioned, but how much is that per property and in total? It's odd. This is the second time I've seen this story and that relevant information is missing in each one. It reads more like a government press release to make it look like they are doing something but it's window dressing only. We need structural reform in housing. Not just in Australia, but worldwide. It's a necessity, not an asset.
It's an ongoing fee. The initial fee is raised by 3 times, and if the property is empty for more than 6 months of the year, they are charged twice the fee (so 6 times what the fee currently is, which starts at $13200aud and is up to $105600aud depending on the value of the property)
This means it will cost tens of thousands of dollars up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, each year, to leave it empty over half the year
Yeah. The article doesn't go into details whether vacancy is self reported and what enforcement looks like.
The cynic in me says this is a great political policy, but something foreign investors will sidestep with minimal effort.
Is it based on water consumption? Leave a tap dripping.
Is it based on electricity consumption? Leave a light on.
Is it based on garbage being collected? A friend takes your bins out once every couple of months.
I want these policies to work to better support Australians with more housing options, but I'm not convinced this is enough.
Haven't read the article- does it explain why are there so many empty properties? I didn't know this was a thing. I'm glad they're finally coming along with regulations though
The bogeyman reason is investors (and especially Chinese investors).
Suspect the real reason is they're a mix of holiday homes, near ruins, crap properties in crap locations, tangled up in a bunch of legal shit, inheritance proceedings, or the old person that owns it is in care.
There's a bunch of greed as well, but it's not worth leaving a property empty over renting it out for an exorbitant sum.
They're vehicles for foreign investment.
There are many, but one of the reasons is to buy a house in the catchment area of a good school. They child can attend and pretend they are living in the house but still live in the city
Considering that the government is simultaneously boosting migration so that we're granting 200,000 permanent visas every year I don't see this as having any real positive effect. Permanent residents are exempt from this fee.
Edit: adding because I keep getting replies that assume I think I loathe permanent residents. The reason I stated they were exempt is to add context for those unaware. To be clear, and to stop annoying people with shit reading comprehension calling me racist, I think everyone regardless of migration status should be penalised for leaving empty houses.
Permanent residents are basically Australians.
The government should focus on improving existing Australians rather than making new Australians. Boosting migration during a housing crisis is irresponsible. It isn't only permanent visas as well. The government is doing everything it can to increase the amount of people competing for housing in Australia.
Everyone who is leaving a house empty at this time should be penalised. This is just another nonsense move by the government that will have nil effect on the crisis they created.
So... you don't want permanent residents who intend to live their entire life in Australia to be able to buy property? Don't you think this is a bit xenophobic?
FFS, does anyone read? I think there should be fewer permanent visas granted, not that permanent residents shouldn't be able to buy a home. You people just want to call someone racist. Not sure if there's a word for that.
Who said anything about denying them the right to a home? I said Australia should grant less permanent visas not strip rights from existing permanent visa holders.
Why limit these fees to foreigners? Why not penalize anyone who is leaving properties empty?
Vancouver, BC in Canada did the same, though they actually fully banned foreign property purchasing. I'm guessing it's low hanging fruit that won't get much pushback within the country. Hopefully these are just first steps, in both cases.
Really wish fucking anything were being done in the US.
Vancouver: https://vancouversun.com/business/real-estate/experts-say-foreign-buyer-ban-wont-bite-b-c-real-estate-prices
That was a temporary 2 year ban on foriegn buyers, but it was too little too late. They already injected too much money and equity in to the market. I'm sure there's a way around it too. Corporations can still buy property. And once the ban is lifted it's back to normal and the prices are still fucked even with the temporary ban.
Yeah they really need to fix that in the US.. there also needs to be a very significant reduction of property tax for individuals that are enterprising enough to rehab zombie properties. Go to like any city in the US, and you'll find so many homes that are sitting abandoned because the city has assessed them for such astronomical prices that no investor will touch them due to their condition.. The only option becomes to demolish them at taxpayer expense as they fall deeper and deeper into disrepair.
Last I saw half the elected lawmakers have investment properties.
They'll never make any laws that will impose additional requirements or possibly impact property prices negatively.
I can't read that whole article but yeah doesn't make sense.. a foreigner could just set up a trust which then purchases the property and leaves it vacant and you're back to square one.
You could become rich with that idea if it wasn't exactly what they started doing!
Because there’s a big difference between an empty apartment in a city and an empty half the year holiday home out in the bush used by the whole family.
And why not give Australians an advantage in our own country? I’m fine with American companies having to pay more taxes towards us.
If you can afford a holiday home, you have enough of an advantage already
The best way to give domestic workers an advantage would be to really raise property taxes, but make them subtractable as a tax credit. Credit.. not deductible, so overall tax burden on workers would be lower.
This would be an easy and logical step away from taxing labour and moving to taxation of land.
I'd suspect Chinese companies would be a bigger problem than the American ones but what do I know.
Because people in your nation are more human than those outside of it.
Or, it could be that there's like 300x more non-Aussies than Aussies so constraining the ability of foreigners to speculate on Australian real estate could be seen as a priority by an institution who's literal job it is to serve the Australian people, first and foremost.
I would guess xenophobia