Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Realty Talk: The Labor influence on property

Episode Date: June 11, 2022

As the dust settles on the frantic political arena, housing was a defining issue of the Federal Election and the Labor party’s win brings with it a raft of policy measures designed to address the property market’s biggest issues.   So we have devoted this show to a special post-election summary.  Bushy and Kevin talk to Tim Lawless from Core Logic who has authored an informative paper on what a Federal Labor Government means for housing affordability and the Australian Property Market. Take this opportunity to pause, take a breath and hear what Tim Lawless thinks about Labor’s key initiatives, interest rates, the markets likely to be in favour of the new policies, regional markets, and cap city futures, first home buyer prospects, housing accessibility vs affordability, social housing and so much more.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to Realty Talk, the show that brings together the country's most authoritative and respected property experts. Follow us on all the socials and subscribe for updates and exclusive offers. Realty Talk is powered by realty.com.au, connecting buyers, sellers and agents differently. Hi, it's Bushy Martin here again and this week Kevin and Turner and I are hosting a very special post-election show. As the dust settles on the frantic political arena, housing was actually a defining issue of the federal election and the Labor Party's win brings with it a potential raft of new policy measures designed to address the property market's

biggest issue. So looking forward to talking to you, with Tim, with you about that. Kevin? Yeah, indeed, mate. And, you know, the old saying, a new broom sweeps clean. It is going to be interesting to see what does happen. And that's why I was particularly excited and pleased that you asked

me to join in on this conversation because I'm always interested in what Tim has to say and I guess it's a good opportunity too Bushy just for us to take a pause a bit of a deep breath and say okay well let's have a look at it now let's have a look at the way forward. Tim has written a wonderful report as well Bushy. He certainly has Kevin and you know Tim and the CoreLogic team have released this very informative paper on what the Federal Labor Government means for both housing affordability and the Australian property market. And we can't wait to dive into that with Tim. So kicking into the first question there, Tim, what does a new Labor government mean generally for housing affordability and the property market compared to the previous Liberal

regime? Yeah, I wouldn't be putting a huge amount of, I suppose, focus on a change in government for the property market, to be honest. Obviously, there are a few additional schemes, which I'm sure we'll talk about but overall it probably comes back to you know how's the broader economy being managed what's going to happen with inflation where interest rates heading and a lot of these factors sure the government has obviously some ability to impact on the direction of those trends but largely these are a lot of you know momentum based issues in the market we know that you know the GDP figures came out a little bit earlier on and they're quite strong and we're expecting the economy will continue to improve but we also know that interest rates are going to be going up quite

quickly and potentially even looking at you know a normalization of rates by the end of the year according to financial markets at least who are looking quite bearish so while a change of government it definitely provides you know an injection of certainty and removes some of the i guess uncertainty that we're seeing leading into the federal election you know i'm not too sure if the the actual housing policies themselves are going to have an overall material impact on the direction of the market partly because of the the caps that are involved you know the spaces are limited there's income caps there's pricing caps and we've also seen a fairly significant pull forward of demand from first home buyers already anyway so um and of course we've got the market

moving into a softer phase which could all be um uh you know a bit of a distraction for first home buyers. Tim, there was a lot of talk during the campaign, as you would expect anyway, leading up to the election. Can you just give us a bit of an insight as to what are the key initiatives that Labor did announce during the campaign? And just give us a bit of an overview of some of those. Well, the flagship was their help to buy scheme. And this is a shared equity arrangement that the Labor government's announced. It's obviously it's limited. So there's only 10,000 places available. and then beyond that there was also the regional um uh the regional first homebuyer support scheme so again 10 000 places really trying to look at getting people into regional housing markets

where we know values have risen a lot more than the capital cities and rental markets are quite tight and then beyond those two schemes there's also some announcements around uh the national or NIFIC, the National Housing Investment Fund that the government's been running. And that'll expand into or be reframed into Housing Australia, some initiatives around boosting funding for social and community housing, and also some initiatives aimed at improving housing supply overall, although I think

we can acknowledge that's largely a state-based initiative rather than federal, which the federal is trying to take a leadership role in. Yeah, very good point. Well, I wouldn't mind drilling into some of those if we can, Tim, and let's kick off with the help to buy scheme. Can you sort of start by giving us a little bit of a rundown on your current understanding of how it works, who can access it and what likely impact it's going to have? Yeah, the first thing to say is if people are really interested in these schemes, just do a Google search. There's a lot of fact sheets online from the actual government themselves.

And no doubt there'll be more information coming out because a few of the, I guess, the finer details are still not really being published. So watch this space in many ways. But the help to buy scheme, so 10,000 places, it's a shared equity arrangement where if you're buying an established home, the government will take a shared portion

up to 30% in the value of that home, simply meaning the government would own 30% of the dwelling and they'd share in 30% of the upside. or probably 30% of the downside as well, although that hasn't really been made too clear. Or if it's a new dwelling, the government would take a 40% stake, up to 40% stake.

So they're really trying to, once again, incentivize more buyers coming in to build and introduce more stock to the marketplace, which makes sense. But chances are most of this demand will funnel through to the established housing market. We know that building a new home at the moment has its challenges uh with you know construction costs are rising extremely rapidly and finding

labor and supplies is becoming much harder so there's a lot of uncertainty there so chances are we will see um this has been quite a popular policy not because people are falling over themselves for the government to own a portion of their home it's probably the opposite but uh it really helps first home buyers getting their foot in the door um well it's not even first home buyers it's it's limited to open to those people who don't currently own a home so there are some eligibility requirements though so there's income caps so if you're buying a home as an individual you can't be earning more than ninety thousand dollars or if you're buying it as a couple then the income cap for for the combined couples is 120 000 so it's really trying

to gear this incentive towards the middle to lower end of the income spectrum and you've also got property price caps which vary from region to region and they vary from say 400,000 in say regional australia regional western australia up to 950,000 in sydney and some of the major regional centers around regional new south wales it kicks off in july 2022 so virtually there's some immediacy here and again i wouldn't be surprised if it's quite popular in those 10,000 places uh get um get consumed pretty quickly because it does help buyers get over one of what's one of the key hurdles of accessing the market which is the deposit hurdle saving up a 20 deposit is really hard but the buyers will still need to have to fund their transactional

costs like stamp duty conveyancing building inspections and stuff like that yeah stay with us. We're going to come back in just a moment. We're talking to Tim Lawless from Coologic. Now that we've got a new Labor government, what are some of the impacts we're likely to see? Stay with us when we come back and talk about interest rates and a few more of the key initiatives that have been announced by Labor. This is Realty Talk back in just a moment. Successful property investment is a game of finance. Do you have the right team and the right game plan? Realty Talk is brought to you by know how property more than mortgage brokers bushy martin and his team of investment architects set you up with a sustainable strategy structured to lower your costs tax risk

and stress while increasing your capacity for growth know how has helped over 1900 homeowners and investors secure more than 800 million dollars in property wealth so get set to live more work less and live your legacy want to know how to invest in your freedom visit knowhowproperty.com.au welcome back now can you continue the conversation uh around the labor government schemes uh tim i'd love for you to talk to us about some of the risks of buying with a small two percent deposit that's been envisaged with the home to buy scheme and you know when we're seeing many locations that are expected to experience sort of softening housing values over the next couple of years what are your thoughts on the downside risks associated with that? Yeah there's some upside

and of course there's some downside to all of these policies so the upside is you know raising 2 deposits much more achievable for a lot of australians they don't have to save for as long but the downside as i think you're alluding to there is you're buying into a marketplace that's probably right at the the peak and markets like sydney and melbourne already moving into what looks to be the down phase so you don't need much of a downturn in the housing market with a two percent deposit before you're in a negative equity position or a negative um where housing values are worth less than what you actually own on the property which can be a pretty risky situation so if you um generally it's not too bad or it doesn't really mean too much if you continue

your mortgage repayments and in a time when labor markets are really tight unemployment's now below four percent and drifting lower i don't think this is all that much of a risk that uh will start to see people falling into negative equity and then start to fall behind in the mortgage repayments And that's probably the critical area here. But if households do move through some level of disruption to their circumstances, maybe loss of a job or loss of income or have a child and one of the partners has to be away from work for some time, then that could create some issues when you don't have much of a buffer built up. And that's the beauty of having a larger deposit is, you know, you can see prices fall to some extent, and you still know that you're in a positive equity situation. So for recent homebuyers and buying right at the peak of the marketplace, we're expecting there probably will be some broad-based falls. 2% deposit doesn't really give you much wiggle room to stay in a positive equity situation. Yeah, very good point.

Now, I know that WA has been running a similar type of scheme under the Key Start program for quite some time. Can you share some of the experience from that in this regard? Yeah, well, Key Start's been running for a long time and it was available well before Perth went through that long running downturn. It pretty much went from 2014 and we've only seen Perth recently move through a nominal recovery. we're only seeing perth housing values now about three or four percent higher than what they were back in 2014 so what happened with a lot of people who took on a key start program which very similar to the federal program it's a shared equity arrangement was that they found that they did go into a negative equity situation and we did see mortgage arrears rise because of course in wa

they did move through some very weak economic conditions where unemployment moved higher and jobs growth reduced and housing prices fell. So what that meant for a lot of those people was that they were stuck in this shared equity situation. You know, generally these sort of programs, they offer up higher interest rates as well. So you're paying a bit of a premium on your cost of debt. And if you're in a negative equity situation, it's much harder to refinance out of that situation. So there have been a lot of people sort of stuck in this arrangement. The government obviously has had to share in some of the downside risk as well which uh which isn't great um but overall now we are starting to see the wa market showing very much stronger fundamentals prices

are rising and we'll probably see some alleviation in those issues but it is a pretty good case study on what can happen when you sort of buy into the marketplace on a low deposit and then prices fall and then the economy weakens it wasn't a good scenario for a portion of those buyers yeah when i say arrears rose we saw mortgage arrears in wa uh for key start program sort of getting up in the mid one percent range so it wasn't it wasn't uh you know material but uh considering mortgage arrears in australia when i say mortgage arrears by the way it's it's the proportion of loans that are more than 90 days behind in their repayments uh generally that's around 0.6 to 0.8 or the mortgage book in australia so getting up around the mid ones is is still quite a substantial

deviation from the norm uh tim just picking up on that point about the 10 000 places that are going to be available in that scheme um and you'd have a better understanding of this than me but the number of transactions that occur during the year i think somewhere between 500 600 000 is that is that fairly accurate yeah so overall this is a fairly you know a bit of a spec in the in the ocean uh anyway so you're right there's generally about 500 to 600 000 home sales at the peak of last year we went through a record level of home sales and got up to about 620 000 but normally you'd expect there's going to be less than that probably 500 to 550 000 over say the coming year so with 10 000 places that doesn't really make a material difference and i think that's probably by

design but the last thing the government probably wants to be accused of is stimulating demand so much that it pushes up prices higher and erodes the whole uh you know this is trying to improve affordability but of course we know demand side factors like this can actually do the opposite and push prices higher well just on that point but what proportion of suburbs or areas around australia think are going to fit the the pricing criteria that they've set down it varies remarkably you know and as i mentioned a bit earlier on there are price caps here so uh go to somewhere like the act for example and the price cap in the act for the help to buy scheme is six hundred thousand dollars you've got a median house price in canberra that's uh about a million dollars

and a median unit price that's uh up around seven hundred thousand dollars uh so there's only one suburb in canberra that's actually eligible uh for the price caps um at least for houses there's there's about 21 suburbs per unit. So probably that'll skew demand towards the unit sector, the medium to high-density markets, which not every first home buyer wants to buy into. But then go to somewhere like regional Queensland is a good example. So the price cap in regional Queensland is $500,000.

If you want to buy a house, there's about 224 suburbs that actually come up with a median value that's below that price cap. That's about 65% of suburbs across regional Queensland. It tends to exclude the really popular areas. So the Gold Coast or the Sunshine Coast, for example, pretty rare to find a property that's going to fit in with those price caps. But if you go to the unit market, again, across regional Queensland, it's about 99% of suburbs have a median unit value below the price cap. So, you know, it is going to skew demand towards those lower end price points, particularly characterised by medium to high density styles of dwellings. Tim, stay with us. Tim Lawless from CoreLogic is our guest.

Bush and I are talking to him about the new Labor government and the impact their policies might have after this very short break. I'm going to come back. We will talk about interest rates and also about regional Australia. That point you just made then, Tim, we'll pick up on that. and also housing affordability, what's likely to occur there. This is Realty Talk. Stay with us. Back in just a moment. Property depreciation is the natural wear and tear of a building and its assets. Property investors can claim depreciation as a tax deduction each financial year.

Depreciation is a non-cash deduction. This means you don't need to spend any money in order to claim it. On average, BMT tax depreciation find residential investors almost $9,000 in first full financial year deductions. Call BMT on 1300 728 726 today for an obligation free quote. Welcome back to Realty Talk. Bushy Martin and I are talking to Tim Laws from CoreLogic with the new Labor government now in place. Tim, let's talk about interest rates quickly before we take on any other issues related to labor policies what's likely to be the impact you think of higher interest rates well clearly this is a downside risk for housing you wouldn't expect

that higher interest rates are a positive thing for housing demand so we know that interest rates they're moving off record lows cash rate is 0.1 percent typically you'd be getting a variable mortgage rate in the low 2% range. But that's starting to change really quickly now. We've already seen the RBA moving once back in May, and chances are when they meet next Tuesday or June for the board meeting, then we'll probably see another rate hike, maybe even as much as 40 basis points coming through, considering the GDP numbers are quite strong and look at income levels on the GDP data were up about 5% over the year. That's starting to make it look like the RBA might act a little bit more quickly in raising or normalizing interest rates. What does it mean

for mortgage rates? Well, generally, the higher cash rate flows through immediately into higher variable mortgage rates. We know that fixed rates have been rising for more than a year now as well. So they may not be as much affected, but fixed rates are already way higher than what variable mortgage rates are so to give you a bit of a bit of context here financial markets are suggesting we'll see a cash rate getting up to around three percent by the first quarter of next year which is extreme that looks overly bearish to me but most of the economic forecasts coming out of the banking sector range from say a cash rate stabilizing at around 1.25 to 1.3 percent all the way up to a cash rate of 3% by 2024. I think simply just the fact that we're seeing such a broad range

in forecasts for where the cash rate may land, just highlights the uncertainty of all these moving parts and where we actually will see interest rates sort of finding a neutral setting or where they're going to peak at. But for the housing market, the biggest thing is how quick and how high interest rates go if we do see rates move say 200 basis points higher which which doesn't doesn't seem all that unreasonable at the moment for say somebody buying to the sydney market that means they're spending about an extra one thousand dollars per month on their mortgage repayments so it's quite substantial whereas somewhere more affordable think about a market like perth where the median price is about 560 000 you're looking at a monthly repayment increase of

of about $560 a month. So it varies from region to region depending on how high housing prices are and how much deposit is going to be. But absolutely, this is a material change for the housing market. Not only do higher interest rates mean more mortgage repayments,

but it also means lenders will be testing potential borrowers on a higher serviceability assessment. So again, it makes credit conditions tighter than what they might have been if we hadn't seen the cash rate lifting. Yeah, totally agree. Well, doing some homework on that, Tim, and on an average $600,000 mortgage, which is

close to what the average is across the country at the moment, for every 1% that the rates rise, it's going to reduce buying capacity on average by about $100,000. So it will have some bite in terms of that demand side and the sorts of prices that people are going to be able to pay for properties they're looking to secure moving forward. But Tim, sort of switching gears now back into the Labor flavor to get a feel for what's happening there. What's your thoughts on the fact that, you know, Labor's been claiming that the housing crisis has been hitting regional Australia the hardest? Is this being supported by your analysis today? Well, not necessarily.

I mean, in one case, you can look through the COVID period to date and we can see the regional housing prices have risen way more than what capital city markets have you know up about 40 percent through the pandemic today capital city prices are up about 22 so virtually double but of course the regional markets are starting from a much lower base and regional housing prices are generally still more affordable than capital city housing prices so there's maybe a little bit of a myth here that we have seen affordability becoming much more challenging in regional australia but the other way to look at this also is that incomes across regional Australia tend to be lower. So if you adjust for incomes, you can see that the dwelling price to income ratio has actually risen to be above what

the capital cities are. So in that sense, I think the Labor government's absolutely right that we are seeing affordability pressures more challenging now in regional Australia, partly because of this really strong appreciation of prices, but also because incomes tend to be lower. And then you've also got the rental affordability side of things as well, where we know that rents are rising across regional Australia much more rapidly than the capital cities. And we're not seeing much new rental supply coming into the market. So we can't really see that situation turning around anytime soon. Tim, in your opinion, do you think Labor's got any really strong or significant intentions to do anything about affordability and also housing accessibility well there's a few ways

to look at that i reckon kevin i mean at face value it looks like most of their initiatives to tackle affordability are really tackling the symptoms of affordability trying to get more people into the marketplace by addressing the demand side you know giving people um deposit guarantees or shared sharing in their equity to help them get into the market rather than really focusing on why is how why are housing prices as expensive as what they are so there are a few initiatives in in their uh their policy platform around you know a 10 billion dollar fund to boost social and community housing i think that's that's a great initiative we need to see more of that But also expanding NIFIC to become Housing Australia and taking a leadership role in working with the state governments, I think, is another really good initiative.

And I think it's probably worthwhile acknowledging as well that the supply side of housing does tend to be much more relegated to a state level responsibility or even local government responsibility. The federal government can help. They can provide funding. They can provide leadership, as in what they've already announced. but in many ways it really means that the state governments need to step up and improve land supply improve zoning and town planning regimes and improve transport productivity as well to connect up a lot of those areas that are very affordable to make them more desirable yeah sort of drilling into the social and affordable housing piece for a minute tim what in you've mentioned the 10 billion dollar initiative i'm guessing that's under the housing australia future fund can you sort of uh give us a little bit more detail around that side

yeah so exactly the housing australia future fund it's 10 billion dollars um which will be a an investment vehicle so essentially that 10 billion dollars of funding goes into a fund and they invest it and hopefully get uh gets uh income flowing out of it and then that income then flows into um the private sector social and community housing providers to build more affordable housing options so it it should work right so it's these sort of funds have a track record of being successful um nific would be would be managing that or the newly branded housing australia would be managing this they've got a really good track record they've got some very smart people in there so their objective is to um over the next five years is to fund 20 000

social housing properties to fund 10 000 affordable homes for key workers so i'm just reading off the the list here um and 200 million in maintenance and improvements for indigenous communities the list goes on so i think this is a really good initiative but probably it's the tip of the iceberg it's a good start we need to see a lot more dedicated you know if the government isn't going to take an active role in providing public housing it needs to be funding the private sector to take on that initiative you know we still rely obviously on private sector mom and dads for introducing rental housing to australia for the vast majority of rental homes and you know at the moment that's completely undersupplied so good to see these initiatives but it needs yeah it is

certainly a great initiative and you mentioned the time frame in there of five years is that realistic do you think i mean we're talking about 20 000 social housing properties that's a that's a huge amount of building to take place is it realistic yeah i think it is realistic and you Look at some of the, like there's one of the community housing provider lobby groups called Power Housing, headed up by Nick Proud. They've got a whole stable of community housing providers under them, and they're all just chafing at the bit to get this funding to kick off their programs. There's some other really cool initiatives.

Look at the Brisbane Housing Company as a good example, and their privatization arm of their real estate business works exactly like a real estate business, but they pump all their profits directly in the community and social housing construction as well. So outside of this fund, there are also some pretty smart initiatives going on.

And I think it's really recognized to be an area of the economy and of the housing sector that needs a lot more attention, especially with affordability not being tackled as meaningful as what it should be. before kevin wraps up i i've had a lot of people asking me in recent times you know

and now with the lab regime is the old chestnut of uh negative gearing uh giving the reliance on mom and dads to supply housing is that going to get a guernsey uh have you picked up any any thoughts or chatter around that subject at all tip no it's been absolutely uh crickets on that one and probably not surprising i think it would be a very brave government that tried to stand in the way of getting more investment into the marketplace when the rental market is tight is what it is a big part of vacancy rates being around one percent if not lower around the country is this long running downwards trend we've seen in investment since 2015 you know the investors have had a lot of barriers placed in their way of of being active in the marketplace and the net

result has been an undersupply of rental dwellings and an absolute surge in rental costs now that we've got international borders reopened and migration coming back in that demand is going to flow directly into rental markets and we are expecting to see rents continuing to rise you know rising at about 9.2 percent per annum at the moment which is way above average doesn't look like it's going to slow down tim it's been a great conversation but i wouldn't be doing my job if i didn't ask you this last question and that is to bring your crystal ball out for us if you could But we're really interested to know your perspective on whether or not you believe Labor's initiatives are going to have a positive or negative impact on the property market, particularly in terms of affordability. Yeah, I don't think they're going to have a material impact, to be honest.

So look at the demand side of things. Just simply the fact that there's only 10,000 places in help to buy. There's 10,000 places in the regional home buying scheme. we've got the existing arrangements of the uh the first home deposit scheme that actually expires at the end of june i'm not sure if it's going to be renewed or not then you've got the family home guarantees as well that's 10 000 places up to 2025. so add all that up and sure there is you know i guess you could call it almost material impact there on trying to get more demand into the market but overall remember this isn't really addressing affordability it's addressing home

ownership affordability needs to be tackled in way different ways more from the supply side and we know that's that's still probably not not sufficient but i think for the housing sector overall what's going to be more meaningful from the labor government is how well do they manage the economy what sort of policies do they have in place to stimulate economic growth to get us through this transitionary phase of rising interest rates um you know obviously they don't have a lot of input on where interest rates are going but they do have a lot of input on the policies that support the economy so that's going to be the key one to watch chances are the economy will continue to improve the labor market will continue to tighten wages will continue to rise

all those factors should help to offset any sort of weakness in the housing market but not fully we are expecting the market will move through a fairly broad-based downturn over the next 12 to 18 months probably larger falls in sydney or melbourne but some insulation in markets like say perth or adelaide or brisbane which tend to be more affordable and have a pretty decent demographic tailwind behind them but also the unit sector i think more and more on the affordability conversation more and more demand is going to have to be pushed into that medium to high density sector simply because that's where budgets are going to be taking people hey tim thank you so much for your time you've given us. You've been very generous today in the show. So thank you and

a wonderful insight. Congratulations on your report too. Stay with us. But Tim, thank you very much for your time and all the best. Good talking to you. Absolute pleasure. Thanks, Kevin. Thanks, Bushy. Thanks, Tim. Stay with us. I'm going to come back after this short break. I want to catch up with Bushy and just get his insights as to what Tim has had to tell us today in the show. This is Realty Talk, back with you in just a moment. today for an obligation free quote successful property investment is a game of finance do you have the right team and the right game plan realty talk is brought to you by know how property more than mortgage brokers bushy martin and his team of investment architects set you up with a

sustainable strategy structured to lower your costs tax risk and stress while increasing your capacity for growth. KnowHow has helped over 1,900 homeowners and investors secure more than $800 million in property wealth. So get set to live more, work less, and live your legacy. Want to know how to invest in your freedom? Visit knowhowproperty.com.au. Welcome back. Well, gee, Bushy, wasn't that an interesting conversation with Tim? He just brings so much value to the table that guy uh he was brilliant mate he the depth of the analysis and the understanding of what's happening and and the implications of what that means it's absolutely second to none kevin i really love talking to tim he's always worth listening to yeah did you did

you notice something tim uh when we were asking him questions he obviously has lots of screens around him and he's referred to this one on that one i mean i've always wondered how he keeps his mind around so many facts and figures, but very well researched is our Tim. So what were your major takeaways? I think the reality is that, and as Tim sort of made pretty clear, government initiatives, while they probably play at the edges, don't have a major impact on what's happening in the housing market. And while there's

clearly some pretty good initiatives that the Labor government is looking to introduce, it's really only going to affect a very small number of people that are looking to get into the property market so i i guess you know positive but minimal impact i think the other thing too that's a big miss from any government at the moment kevin is addressing the supply side exercise because there's a a major focus on uh state governments bearing this responsibility and a major almost unwritten invisible exercise where the private sector is expected to pick up all of the supply side needs and address the social uh housing exercise i think at some point in time whether it's this government or another one they're going to need to get together with the

states and start addressing those issues at a much more fundamental basis what are your thoughts yeah well matt i quite often wonder why governments don't focus totally on not so much affordability, but availability. And I think Tim did definitely touch on this. And that's why, you know, like you and he, I applaud anything to do with social housing, because I think that is the responsibility of the government, whether it be state or federal. And I think if they put all their resources and funding into that area, and let the market take its own balance, you know, without having to, you know, subsidise people to get into their first home, whether they need it not and you know this might not be a very popular view but i i don't know that governments should be

trying to manipulate housing price i think they certainly can have a big play in in availability maybe even supply when you talk about you know land mass coming on so you know maybe less involvement at a government level in trying to uh adjust prices and get more to do with because Because we do have a really big problem with social housing. There's no question of that. I read somewhere the other day, Bushy, that if you apply for social housing today in some parts of Australia, you could be waiting for five or ten years.

I mean, that's just not acceptable. It's not acceptable at all. No, that's criminal. And with rental prices going where they are, and that's going to continue for quite some time, it's really going to put a squeeze on the disadvantaged at that point. And while the Help to Buy scheme, I think, is a very pleasant addition to the exercise in reducing some of that, you know, the access hurdle and the major deposits that you've got to come up with just to get in. It's probably not going to go far enough in terms of the number of people that's likely to support.

So it'll be interesting to see how it comes out of the wash. Yeah, I'm just interested in your take, too, on, you know, during the election campaign, there was a lot of talk about housing affordability and the policies that they're going to bring out. it almost dominated the whole conversation. At the end of the day, do you think that actually got Labor across the line or is it the fact that maybe this wasn't a good election to win? Yeah, a bit of a mix there, Kevin. I've sort of come to the conclusion that Australians aren't,

they're looking for a new broom, as you well said, at the start of the show, sooner rather than later. And it doesn't matter how well you perform. If you've been around too long, they want to try something else. So I have a sense that it's probably not a policy-driven exercise. It's more a fact that because it's almost a personality contest these days to some degree, particularly in the way it's been presented in the mainstream media, that people are just going, no, we've had enough of ScoMo. Let's see what Alba can do. Yeah.

Gee, interesting. Well, I guess time will tell, mate. A fantastic Bushy. Thank you so much. Mate, really appreciate what you're doing with the show too. you're doing a fabulous job with Realty Talk and it's always a pleasure when you invite me to come back in.

And I'm sorry if I tend to take over sometimes because that's just the breeding. That's just the way it is. So well, mate, I'm happy to step back, mate. Don't you worry about that. I'm learning from the master as far as that goes, mate. Really loving it. Just before we close off,

I always like to say a big thank you to realty.com.au and BMT Tax Depreciation for their ongoing support. The show wouldn't happen without that support. so we're really enjoying that mate and another great opportunity to be sharing the microphone with you good on you buddy look forward to talking to you soon mate sure show you do the wrap-up well uh thanks again kevin and another special thanks to tim for joining us to really open our eyes to what impact of any the new labour government's likely to have in the property market moving forward and remember to always get invested and both kevin and i look forward

to seeing you again soon so stay with us on australia's longest running and most popular property show realty talk miss something in this week's show or want to catch up on past shows do it anytime at realty.com.au where we connect buyers sellers and agents differently