Councils must approve and banks must lend to revive housing, says Harry Triguboff

Harry Triguboff believes more apartments are needed to arrest a slide in housing supply and the rental crisis. Picture: Gaye Gerard/NCA Newswire

The hysterical reaction to home rents has to stop.

All kinds of figures are quoted by various characters who know nothing, but unfortunately are quoted by the papers.

Our famous politicians now think that if they ­attack the people who lease property, they will gain votes.

But first of all it is important to know that rents have moved no more than inflation if we take into account the rent drops during Covid.

For those two years the renters had a ball because many foreigners left and there was an immediate oversupply of rental accommodation.

Of course, the owners all suffered.

Only now we are returning to our normal supply and demand.

But if the government threatens investors daily that they will charge too much, what investor will ever come here? Until the latest efforts to entice big foreign firms to come, we provided rental accommodation from within Australia.

The big companies here invested in offices and shops. But housing was supported by ordinary people. Labor found that out when they lost the election to Morrison in 2019, thinking that little investors would be glad if negative gearing was destroyed.

But at present there are very few investors, I am selling only to home buyers. So, the stock of rental accommodation instead of rising is falling. So, the pressure is on for rents to rise.

Meriton Apartments in Green Square in Sydney. Picture: Gaye Gerard/NCA Newswire

The other result is that investors are selling instead of buying. Forget about the cost of rentals, there is just less occurring all the time. People will either leave Sydney or buy. Because of this, the house prices will rise. And more apartments will also be sold ­instead of rented.

We are lucky that the NSW Premier Chris Minns sees the problem. But the planning department is still the same. And yet, the Prime Minister ­Anthony Albanese promised one million homes. But there is still confusion about how new incentives to build 30 per cent more on the same land will apply. Go and ask the planning ­department, and they don’t know how to do it. They want the Premier to tell them how.

But owners of land have already lifted the price of land even though the planning department is waiting for Mr Minns.

The pressures are growing. There are more builders that have gone bankrupt than anyone else. Very few succeeded. Councils and the planning department must find reasons to approve not to delay. The best way for politicians to gain votes is to have a ­vibrant housing situation.

And some states are doing this. Rents have stopped going up in Queensland, and in fact have not risen for the last two months.

But in NSW, government charges for building are far too high. ­Especially as it takes three years to get approvals. Not the three months claimed by the authorities.

And there are some positive changes afoot with exemptions from stamp duty applying from this month which have helped sales.

There are more steps that could be taken. Foreigners were big investors into residential leasing, now they are a small percentage of what they were. If we could charge them less stamp duty and land tax, they could come back.

Councils must approve and banks must lend and not leave it to secondary lenders. Meriton is lending all the time and we are not broke. If we can do it, so can the banks. But they must have good returns.

These changes are necessary if we want enough homes.

Otherwise, the Gold Coast, where they build like crazy, will come out better than Sydney.

Because they will have the stock.

Harry Triguboff is managing director of Meriton Group