Greens Housing Policies

The official data shows that the cornerstone of the financial wellbeing of most Australian households is the family home.

Over two-thirds of the household wealth in this country is residential property and, for most of them, this means their home - as most people don’t own investment properties.

The family home is the foundation of the financial security of most people and its value underpins people’s lives and their sense of security - and, in particular, their retirement.

The good news is that household wealth nationally grew 10% in the past year and 68% of that wealth resides in the residence.

The bad news is that if the Greens have their way, all of that will be decimated.

Their policy for real estate is to force the value of your home to fall - a lot.

And if you’re performing one of society’s most important functions, providing a home for others to live in as tenants, the Greens want you to be rubbed out. Not just curtailed, but eliminated.

Now, we’ve known for some time that the Greens are anti real estate and, in particular, hostile towards anyone who owns an investment property, even though these are the people who provide 91% of the homes that tenants occupy in Australia - and they’re in extreme short supply.

If the Greens have their way, ownership of investment properties will cease to exist in Australia - although, at the same time, they have no policy about who will provide the 3.2 million rental homes that investors currently provide.

But it gets worse, because the Greens plan is to force down the value of everyone’s home.

They apparently believe that this is how you deal with the issue of housing affordability.

One thing that is abundantly clear is, rather tragically, that no one in the Greens has any understanding of Australian property markets. They have no comprehension of how the cost of housing became so high, no clue as to how rental properties became so scarce, no understanding of why prices rise and no sensitivity to how important the value of the family home is in the life of the nation.

Because everything they propose to do, if they ever gained power, would make all of these issues infinitely worse and would decimate the structure of one of society’s most fundamental needs, shelter.

Observing the Greens espouse economic and real estate policy is like watching primary school kids talk about stuff they think is cool. Imagine if you could have anything you wanted and it doesn’t matter how much it costs and whether it’s really possible or not.

The Greens apparently don’t consider it necessary to cost their policies or to consider the consequences of their pixie-eyed plans.

Just one example: in the election campaign of local government in Queensland earlier this year, a key policy plank was fast rail connecting Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Toowoomba and the Sunshine Coast. There were no costings and no funding proposals for a plan, if you can call it that, which would cost many tens of billions of dollars. 

They also said they would build hundreds of affordable homes on the site for the Eagle Farm race course In Brisbane and it would all cost no more than $40 million, glossing nonchalantly over the fact that the race course land has an owner not keen to cease operations, and that land alone is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, never mind the cost of construction of hundreds of homes.

But returning to their policy of smashing the value of family homes.

Imagine if you’re a young couple who saved a 10% deposit and bought a first home for $600,000 and you have a mortgage of around $550,000. If the Greens had their way, your new home would be worth less than the size of your mortgage. You would be in a position of negative equity and you would be in an extremely vulnerable position. Your bank would be highly concerned and everything you have worked, saved and sacrificed for would be at risk.

Now multiply that by millions of other households and you have a financial, economic and personal disaster of galactic proportions.

And that’s apparently what the Greens want for Australia.

Two-thirds of Australian families own their homes and most would be alarmed at the scenario that the Greens think is fair, reasonable and desirable.

But even more fanciful than the Greens’ objective of destroying the value of our homes is the means by which they say they’ll achieve it.

Their stated plan is to scrap negative gearing and increase capital gains tax.

This apparently, miraculously, will cause the collapse of property values in Australia.

The Greens believe that the owners of investment properties in Australia are a criminal class and the source of all evil in the housing market.

Smashing investors will fix everything, apparently, including housing affordability, the rental shortage and the ongoing increase in rents.

No one cares what happens to investors, in the Greens’ mindset, because they’re all rich bastards who own 15 or 20 properties and earn millions of dollars a year - right?

Well, no. Here’s the reality. The typical investor is a young Australian who earns less than $100,000 a year and owns just one property or is buying their first.

They’re not wealthy, they’re not inherently evil and because they cannot afford to spend big, they’re buying at the lower end of the market and are limited in how much they can spend on a property.

They comprise perhaps 30% of buyers in the market. The other 70% are home buyers and the largest and wealthiest cohort in the market are home buyers other than first-home buyers.

They own their existing home, they have equity, they’re older with higher incomes, they can borrow more than first-home buyers and typical investors, and they’re aspirational. They’re the ones most likely to be pushing up dwelling values.

Investors are limited in their borrowing capacity and seriously disadvantaged in the market, because they have to pay higher interest rates, higher stamp duty, higher insurance, higher council rates - plus they have to pay taxes that home buyers don’t have to pay, like land tax and capital gains tax.

The Greens say they are privileged and advantaged – but clearly the opposite is true.

Australia scrapped negative gearing in the 1980s and it didn’t stop prices from rising. But it did create a rental shortage, so a couple of years later the then Labor Government reinstated negative gearing. 

New Zealand scrapped negative gearing in 2021 and dwelling prices kept rising. It was only later, when interest rates went extremely high, much higher than Australia, that NZ prices stopped rising.

But it did make rental properties scarce so New Zealand is now in the process of bringing back negative gearing.

But do the Greens care about any of that? The answer is that the Greens don’t know any of that because they don’t bother themselves with annoying things like knowledge or research.

They’re the spoiled brats of Australian politics and, if they have their way, you’re going to lose a big chunk of your wealth.

Be afraid, be very afraid.