The majority of Aussie voters, including mortgage holders, want to see house prices either drop or stay the same, according to a recent survey.
Fresh polling by housing advocacy group Everybody’s Home revealed that most voters agree Australia needs more drastic solutions to housing affordability than those currently being put forward by government policies.
The majority of the 2000 participants said their housing costs were higher compared to this time last year, with nearly 90 per cent agreeing that housing affordability had deteriorated at least a little.
As a result, more than one in two (54 per cent) wanted to see house prices take a downward turn over the next five years in the hopes of closing the gap between rich and poor buyers and increasing affordability in areas near ‘good’ jobs.
Of those in favour, over two in five (44 per cent) were already mortgage holders, leading Everybody’s Home spokesperson Maiy Azize to claim that even homeowners knew Australia’s runaway home prices were “out of reach” for so many voters.
“It’s a tired trope that homeowners want house prices to keep rising. Rents and mortgages have gone through the roof and there’s only so much people can afford to pay,” she said.
“Many Australians are in housing stress, sacrificing their basic needs to cover housing costs, and worried that their children may never afford to move out of the family home.
“Most voters believe that expensive housing is widening the gap between the rich and poor and making it harder to live near the jobs they want and we all rely on.
Two in three (67 per cent) of voters also said the current financial climate was causing them housing stress, and four in five (84 per cent) were worried about the housing affordability for younger Aussies.
With elections just around the corner, Azize expected the conversations around housing to define the political talks in the coming months.
“People are tired of piecemeal solutions,” he said.
Road to reform
Everybody’s Home echoed similar calls to action that we saw from the Greens party earlier this year, taking aim at government handouts for investors and tax breaks around negatively geared properties.
“Scrapping investor handouts would make housing cheaper and fairer for more Australians. Negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount push up housing costs and make our country more unequal,” said Azize
“Most voters don’t even receive these handouts yet they’re paying the price, losing billions of taxpayer dollars each year to line the pockets of investors.”
Nearly half of voters seemed to agree with 46 per cent in favour of limiting negative gearing tax breaks to one property at a time.
But while it’s unlikely that Aussie politicians will lose their love affair with the popular property tax break, Azize said the extra money could be better spent on social housing – a proposal that 69 per cent of voters were in favour of.
“The tens of billions of dollars we are set to lose over the next decade to investor tax breaks could build social housing that we desperately need,” she said.
“Australia has a social housing shortfall of 640,000 homes. We need the federal government to get back into the business of building homes, and strive for at least one in ten homes to be social housing.”
