Labor drops FHB pledge
After a complete Joey Cocker/Barry Crocker of a first week of the election campaign, Labor's Albanese claimed a points victory for week two.
It probably says something about the quality of the discourse that Albo was literally confined in self-isolation for the entire week (and, thus silenced, unable to make any further howlers or gaffes).
In reality, the punchy inflation figures for the March quarter probably did more to harm the Coalition's polling fortunes than anything else this week.
Media outlets are reporting a broadly indifferent electorate this time around, for whatever that proves to be worth on polling day.
Campaign launch
Labor finally launched its Federal election campaign in earnest this weekend in Western Australia, immediately announcing a new Help to Buy scheme, to help 10,000 eligible first homebuyers per annum with a 2 per cent deposit to get into the market.
The shared equity scheme is variously said to cut 40 per cent from the price of a new home or save up to $380,000 from the repayments on a mortgage, and elicited another furious response across the usual social media channels.
First homebuyer commitments have already been elevated over the past couple of years due to the coronavirus recession stimulus measures.
Ownership to rebound
Australia's home ownership rate soared to a then-record high of 70 per cent at the time of the Census in 1961, and remained broadly stable for around half a century, before declining to 67 per cent at the time of the 2016 Census following a period of very strong investor activity.
We can see from government data that by 2018 while home ownership rates for those with a mortgage had been relatively stable
at 37 per cent, ownership rates for those with no mortgage had continued an
ongoing downtrend to 30 per cent, well down from 42 per cent in 1995.
This partly makes sense at a time of low interest rates, with Baby Boomers likely to take some debt into their retirement years.
Furthermore, those renting from a housing authority had halved from 6 per cent of the market in 1995 to just 3 per cent, as governments have tended to step away from the construction of new social housing.
The share of the market renting from private
landlords, on the other hand, has increased by 18 to 27 per cent since 1995.
But over the past five
years it has been increasingly difficult for private investors to access loans,
leading to a chronic shortage of rental properties in many parts of the country.
In a media release tomorrow, I've mooted the possibility of Australia's home ownership rate rebounding towards 70 per cent, with both sides of politics pledging demand-side measures to help first homebuyers vault the troublesome deposit hurdle.
Demand-side focus
Previously, the incumbent Coalition party had
pledged in its Federal Budget a huge expansion of its deposit guarantee scheme
to 50,000 places per year (comprising 35,000 capital city first homebuyers,
10,000 regional first homebuyers, and 5,000 places for single parents, who may
receive a guarantee with a deposit of only 2 per cent).
Now the Australian Labor Party has announced its new Help to Buy scheme to help 10,000 low- and middle-income first homebuyers per year into the market through a shared equity scheme.
The number of temporary visa holders in Australia collapsed from 2.4 million to 1.8 million due to international border and other restrictions, and now with employment soaring to a record high 13.4 million we're approaching full employment for the first time since the heady resources boom years.
Since most aspiring homebuyers can save a 2 per cent deposit - and because popular schemes can always see the number of available places further extended - it appears increasingly likely that home ownership rates will increase from here.
