The queen of real estate divides the nation with the post office – Australian News Update

The queen of real estate divides the nation with the post office

One of Australia’s best-known property bosses has divided the nation defending ‘greedy landlords’ as further rent increases loom.

Leanne Pilkington, CEO and director of Laing + Simmons, is calling on Australians to ‘change the narrative’ when it comes to blaming investors for the country’s housing affordability crisis.

In a post On LinkedIn, Ms Pilkington said owners of investment properties are entitled to a “market return” and should not be criticized for the way they choose to invest.

“The rental crisis is hitting our cities, regional and coastal locations hard and impacting those who can least afford it – but please stop blaming landlords – without them investing in private rentals, the situation would be even worse than it already is,” she said.



Instead, the highly respected real estate commentator is calling on the federal government to do more to make social housing more affordable and available, arguing that it is not the responsibility of landlords to do so.

But not everyone agreed with Ms Pilkington’s comments, with some of her supporters saying investments involve ‘risk’ and therefore owners should not be entitled to a return.

“If I make an investment in the stock market and the price or dividends drop due to a regulatory change in the market of the company I invested in, I carry that loss,” said a business owner. business.

“The reality is that for many Australians what was once a goal of owning a home is now a pipe dream.”



A chief executive of an insurance company also wrote that while the government is partly “responsible” for Australia’s housing affordability crisis, landlords who drive up house prices and rents do not ” only to add to the suffering” of the poorest Australians.

“Renters don’t want to rent, they want to live in an affordable home. They keep renting because they have to save for a down payment on a price that exceeds wage inflation,” they said.

Meanwhile, a worried NSW resident pointed to a different problem with greedy landlords, noting that high vacancy rates in their area were impacting supply and demand.

“What is there for landlords to keep their properties vacant? I am in an area of ​​Sydney where there is a rental crisis. Every weekend we see lines of 80-100 people queuing to see soulless apartments,” they commented.

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The rent is going up nothing new

According to property market analytics platform PropTrack, advertised rental prices rose 6.7% last year, compared to a 4.7% increase in 2021.

In the December quarter, ACT residents paid the highest median rent for houses, units and dwellings, followed by Sydney and Darwin.

Meanwhile, the national median rent for a house is $500, $460 for a unit and $480 for a dwelling.

Maiy Azize, national spokesperson for Everybody’s Home, said rent increases are nothing new, noting that prices have climbed every year for the past 20 years, with the latest increases being “completely unrelated” to rising prices. interest rate.

“The reality is that we have a system that relies on landlords being nice people… That’s absolutely not how you run a system for an essential service like housing,” she told news.com.au.

“If you have a system that legally allows a landlord to raise rent by $12,000 a year, then these things are going to happen. It doesn’t matter that most landlords are nice…you shouldn’t rely on them to be nice.

Instead, Ms Azize calls on landlords not to give in to the “vicious circle” of arbitrarily raising their tenant’s rent and doing their part to keep rental rates as low as possible.

Ways landlords can open the door to affordable housing include “(agreeing) longer leases, more fixed terms with no rent increases or unfair rent increases.”

While Ms Azize encourages landlords to play a role in solving the country’s housing affordability crisis, she agrees with Ms Pilkington that the government needs to make social housing more available.

“We really need state and territory governments across the country to limit unfair rent increases or ban unfair rent increases…so that’s something they could do,” Ms Azize said.

“But the biggest thing the federal government could do is invest in social and affordable housing.”

“We have a huge deficit across the country of 500,000 social housing units, and the government really needs to address this backlog if it is to be less dependent on small landlords to provide affordable housing.”

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