The CEO of the Real Institute of Australia (REIA) has come out swinging at a National Press Club forum on Australia’s housing crisis.   

REIA CEO Anna Neelagama said supply, affordability issues, and the proliferation of short-term rental services like Airbnb are creating a housing crisis for regional Australia, according to the chief executive of the Real Estate Institute of Australia. 

“We’ve seen in the past years the rise and rise of short-stay accommodation, which has had a particular impact on the regions – some of it positive and some of it not,” Neelagama said. 

She said that the National Housing Investment Finance Corporation predicted that the nation would be about 106,000 homes short of the number of homes needed by 2024-2025.

"It is telling that a regional supply shortfall is not provided as a breakout to this forecast by NHFIC,” she said . “At the same time, last week’s budget papers forecast overseas migration to grow to 400,000 in 2022-23 and 315,000 in 2023-24”. 

“Fixing housing – and regional housing – in Australia is quite simple, and we know, for the most part, the answers,” she said. “We need to do two things. One: Better use of the homes we already have built. Two: Build more homes.” 

ABOVE: Anna Neelagama. Image: REIA. 

Neelagama said that “COVID-19 saw the biggest regional property boom since the Great Financial Crisis, and the largest regional property boom on record” 

Speaking at the same National Press Club event, Anglicare chief executive Kasy Chambers said the $40-a-fortnight boost to the jobseeker payment the number of affordable rentals across all of Australia from just four rooms in share houses to five.  

Chambers said skyrocketing rents in regional areas were having flow-on effects on other services, such as aged care, as pensioners living in private rentals decided to move into residential aged care facilities earlier than they otherwise might because they cannot keep pace with rent. 

She called for a return to fully publicly funded social and affordable housing rather than relying on the private sector and schemes such as negative gearing, capital gains tax concessions, and commonwealth rent assistance. 

“We now spend more commonwealth dollars per capita on those three payments than we ever did on housing, and yet housing affordability has never been lower,” she said. “Anyone can see that this approach is failing.” 

A home for sale in Cobar. SOURCE: realestate.com.au

In terms of AirBnB regulation University of Sydney academics have published research showing that cities like Amsterdam, San Francisco, and London have set limits of 30-90 nights per year that someone can book an entire home for.. Beyond this time, planning permission is needed to change the use of the property. 

More broadly, Neelagama said governments needed to work harder to address the housing crisis. 

“We need the government to support the building and fund the shortfall of housing in Australia and be clear what that means for regional Australia,” she said. 

“We need state planning ministers and LGAs to clear any planning backlogs. We need the Industry and Skills ministries to support Australia’s weakened construction sector to help fix the current building skills crisis.”