ABC's 7:30 Report interview Catherine Cashmore
10/05/2017
Will the budget's housing affordability measures work?
Last night Treasurer Scott Morrison announced various measures he claims will put downward pressure on house prices. But will the plan work?
Transcript here
Excerpt:
CATHERINE CASHMORE, PROPERTY RESEARCHER, PROSPER AUSTRALIA: If we came here at night-time, there would probably be a lot of apartments where there's a good proportion of the apartment with the lights off.
JULIA HOLMAN: The Government has pledged to crack down on vacant properties, putting a levy of at least $5,000 on vacant homes owned by foreign investors. Property researcher Catherine Cashmore says there's thousands of empty properties in the Melbourne CBD.
CATHERINE CASHMORE: In the last report we did, we found around 80,000 that are potentially vacant over a 12-month period. If you're using Melbourne as a benchmark, then I would imagine this is a phenomenal problem nationally.
It's hopeful that the $5,000 levy on empty property will bring more properties onto the market, but the levy is pretty low. So whether there will be some investors that will decide to take the hit of the levy, rather than rent their property out: that's a possibility also.
JULIA HOLMAN: Other changes will affect foreign investors. New developments will now have to be at least 50 per cent Australian-owned.
CATHERINE CASHMORE: It's important that our real estate and our premium urban land is utilised for the domestic market. So that is a good policy to have.
That means that a proportion of properties that are built have to be sold to the domestic market. And when we have buyers that are trying to get into the market and they can't - and we hav
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