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17-02-2025
SYDNEY: Australia will ban foreign investors from buying existing homes in the country for two years, its government said on Sunday, in an effort to boost under-pressure housing supply.
“We’re banning foreign purchases of established dwellings from April 1, 2025, until March 31 2027,” treasurer Jim Chalmers said in a statement with housing minister Clare O’Neil. It added that a review would be undertaken on whether the ban would be extended.
Dissatisfaction with housing in Australia reached an all-time high last year and it is an issue that is expected to dominate a general election due by May.
O’Neil said in comments televised by the Australian Broadcasting Corp that the ban would likely free up around 1,800 properties per year for local buyers.
“These initiatives are a small but important part of our already big and broad housing agenda which is focused on boosting supply and helping more people into homes,” the ministers’ statement said.
Housing is the largest contributor to the rising cost of living in Australia and is set to be a key issue at the upcoming election. A recent poll had the centre-left Labor government lagging its main conservative political opposition.
The government recently passed housing reforms including a shared equity scheme and tax incentives for developers, to ease cost pressures and achieve a target of building 1.2 million new homes by 2030.
Meanwhile, dissatisfaction with housing in Australia reached an all-time high last year, ranking among the worst in the world, according to a survey published on Thursday; an issue that is expected to dominate a general election due by May.
Over three-quarters of Australians surveyed by pollsters Gallup were dissatisfied with the availability of affordable housing in 2024, compared to a median of 50% in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
“Australians are uniquely dissatisfied with housing compared with residents of other high-income countries,” survey co-authors Benedict Vigers and Madeleine Ambort said.
Gallup surveyed around 140,000 people in 140 countries, including 1,000 Australians, on whether they were satisfied with the availability of “good, affordable housing” where they lived.
The findings placed Australia second only to Turkey for housing dissatisfaction in the OECD, despite citizens being satisfied with other community basics such as healthcare (71%), schools (66%) and public transport (61%).
Aside from Turkey in 2024, only Gabon in 2014 has seen greater dissatisfaction over housing than Australia in the past 10 years.
Gallup said underinvestment in housing and high immigration levels had created one of the world’s most expensive markets, further exacerbated in recent years by pandemic-related construction delays.
Between 2002 and 2024, housing prices surged to nine times the average income while rent had more than doubled over a similar period.
“The result is a limited and expensive choice of housing options, which affects younger people and low-income households the most,” Vigers and Ambort said, finding only 16% of adults aged 18 to 34 were satisfied with housing affordability.
“The gaps between satisfaction with housing and these other community basics have never been wider,” they said.
Housing is the largest contributor to the rising cost of living in Australia and is expected to be a major issue in upcoming elections. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
