At CAAN we believe there is more to this story …
This report of 200,000 empty homes owned by foreigners was revealed back in 2017 …
WHY are there so many real estate tours … particularly from China if there is not another agenda? As a whole Cohort of Australians are locked out of the Housing Market …
-Chinese buy up high-rise Precincts where there were previously Business Parks, businesses and jobs
-whole house and land packages where there were farmlands, bushlands and native habitat
-next will be the Medium-Density of rows of terraces, townhouses, Manor Houses, villas, triplex and duplex for which our Australian Heritage and Mid-Century Homes are to be demolished!
Doug Driscoll also revealed in February 2019:
‘Fears one million Aussie homes could soon be owned by foreign buyers’
https://caanhousinginequalitywithaussieslockedout.com/2019/02/16/8400/
‘Australia is selling off natural resources, farmland and property to China at a “crazy” rate — putting us at risk of becoming the “24th province” of the East Asian behemoth.
That’s according to real estate expert Doug Driscoll, who warned of the urgent need to start a national conversation about foreign ownership of residential property in particular.
Not only is it about ‘investment’ but doesn’t it seem like a ‘SILENT INVASION’ … of the CCP is well underway?
Facilitated by the Liberal Coalition Party policies …
-FIRB ruling allows developers to sell 100% of ‘new homes’ overseas particularly in China
-fly in and buy Australian Real Estate to gain a ‘Permanent Resident Visa’
-no Anti-Money Laundering Laws for the Real Estate Gatekeepers
We elaborate on this here …
‘Chinese Development in Australia in early 2019 … Knight Franks Michelle Ciesielski’
AND in this Report:
‘How more than A THIRD of the most expensive homes in Australia are bought by super rich Chinese entrepreneurs’
Sydney has 200k empty homes and foreign investors blamed
Written by Livingston Contributor on December 12, 2019
Sydney‘s ghost homes: How 200,000 homes sit VACANT in Australia‘s most expensive city – because foreign investors buy them and leave them to gather dust
There are 200,000 homes on prime Sydney real estate sitting empty because foreign investors have bought them with no intention of living in them or renting them out, a leading real estate expert claims.
Douglas Driscoll, the chief executive of Starr Partners, estimates the number of unoccupied homes has almost doubled from 120,000 in 2011, in a city which is already the second most unaffordable in the world after Hong Kong.
Mr Driscoll believes the empty homes are a major contributor to Sydney‘s housing crisis, which has seen prices double in the past eight years and rise at an average of $222 a day.
‘Foreign investors are only exacerbating the problem by buying properties and leaving them vacant,‘ he told Daily Mail Australia.
‘(It) only gained genuine momentum in 2012 and in just a few short years we are already seeing 10-20 per cent of property being sold in some pockets to offshore buyers, which leaves a lot of Australians on the sidelines.‘
Mr Driscoll said the government needed to realise the effect of empty homes on housing affordability and urgently start addressing it.
‘Foreign investment is not the elephant in the room, it is a herd of elephants in the room and more needs to be done,‘ he said.
‘These properties should be offered for rent, but if they were to hit the open sales market, it would certainly help alleviate the sparsity issue we are currently facing.‘
Mr Driscoll said hotspots included anywhere in the inner-city or where new houses or apartments were going up, such as Alexandria, Waterloo, Green Square, Sydney‘s city centre, Parramatta, and even Blacktown.
‘There are some developments where you can see straight through apartments because there‘s no furniture,‘ he said.
‘In my own building in Kirribilli there‘s 35 units and three of them are left empty.‘
He said Chinese buyers were used to not receiving much of a return on investment and believed tenants lowered property values by putting ‘wear and tear‘ on them.
‘They bring that same mentality over here without doing the research,‘ he said.
‘A lot of them are also buying their children‘s future, even if they are only in their teens, they are buying them now in highly desirable inner-city areas.
‘When their children are old enough they send them off to university and that‘s where they live. So they might sit empty for three or four years.‘
He said Australia was also an attractive location because homes were much bigger than those in Asia.
‘On average, an Australian home has 89 square metres of floor space, while a country like China has about 33 square metres of space,‘ he said.
Mr Driscoll‘s said investors didn’t get capital gains tax concessions if the property was uninhabited for more than 12 months, but more needed to be done.
‘The government should introduce significant financial penalties or inordinate property taxes for any property owned by a non-resident that is known to be empty for more than 12 months,‘ he said.
‘NSW accounts for half of all investor mortgage finance. Such a strong level of investor interest in Sydney is pushing up the price of our dwellings and it’s time for government intervention to reduce this.
‘I’m certainly not against foreign investment or property investment as a whole, but I do believe it has led to the market becoming hugely out of kilter, causing a multitude of social and economic issues.‘
He said this policy wasn‘t aimed at holiday homes because those were almost always outside metro areas and not adding to housing affordability woes.
Mr Driscoll applauded developments like Mirvac‘s new high-rise project in Olympic Park, in Sydney‘s west, where the first 60 of 690 flats were set aside for first home buyers for only a five per cent deposit.
A housing affordability survey last month ranked Sydney as the second more unaffordable city in the world behind only Hong Kong.
The median house price now stands at $1.1 million, 12.2 times the average annual wage, and dropping to $850,000 when units were included.
It doubled since 2009, increasing 16 per cent in the past year alone, with the most sought-after suburbs rising by more than $1,000 a day.
Last year (2018) Chinese developers acquired a third of all residential development sites in Australia. https://www.realestate.com.au/news/fears-one-million-aussie-homes-could-soon-be-owned-by-foreign-buyers/
SOURCE: https://livingstonledger.com/sydney-has-200k-empty-homes-and-foreign-investors-blamed/
CAAN FACEBOOK:
https://www.facebook.com/Community-Action-Alliance-for-NSW-744190798994541/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel
WEBSITE:
https://caanhousinginequalitywithaussieslockedout.wordpress.com/
COMMUNITY ACTION ALLIANCE FOR NSW (CAAN): HOUSING INEQUALITY WITH AUSSIES LOCKED OUT! 