Labor announced it would allow first home buyers to purchase homes with a 5 per cent deposit. It also pledged $10 billion to go towards building 100,000 new homes over eight years — exclusively available to first-time buyers — by way of grants to states and territories, and zero-interest loans or equity investments.

The Coalition's policy would see interest payments on mortgages taken out by first-time buyers on newly built homes be tax deductible for five years.

Economists have been quick to give scathing assessments of some of the latest policies, which they argue will drive up demand, and in turn, housing prices. Chris Richardson labelled the major parties' platforms a "dumpster fire of dumb stuff", while Saul Eslake called the Coalition's planned tax deduction "candidate for dumbest policy decision of the 21st century".

But housing experts say the policies are missing the crucial issue driving the housing shortage.

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[–] null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 month ago (6 children)

I absolutely agree that both parties' housing policies are just throwing fuel on the fire.

Assisting first home owners increases demand which increases pricing. The obvious beneficiaries of these policies are people that already own houses.

The solutions are addressing tax concessions like negative gearing and capital gains tax, increasing annual land tax, and providing concessions for tiny homes and pre-fab homes.

[–] Whirlybird@aussie.zone 1 points 1 month ago

The best solutions are to stop foreign ownership completely, massively cut immigration temporarily (importing a million people a year when we have a housing supply crisis is literally pouring fuel on the fire), limit how many properties someone can own, remove negative gearing, and slash lots of red tape and costs associated with building multiple homes on peoples land.

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