More than 80,000 homes in Queensland have been left vacant, sparking calls for action against owners who do not rent them out.
The news comes as Australia faces its greatest rental crisis on record.
According to Australian Bureau of Statistics data, 87,000 residential homes in Queensland were not rented out, while there were 577,000 across Australia, according to The Courier Mail.
Property analyst Michael Matusik argues that new tax measures should be implemented to ‘incentivise or penalise’ owners to release their homes for rent.
‘Around 29 per cent of investment properties are not rented out. They are sitting there vacant,’ Mr Matusik said.
According to Urban Utilities, the Sunshine State’s largest water provider, water was turned on in 19,500 homes in lower southeast Queensland.
However, it was determined that no one had been living in those homes for some months.
Katherine Gee, executive manager customer and community at Unitywater, stated that over a 90-day period, 2,104 homes used 1,000 litres or less of water.
Ms Gee added that ‘It is important to note that it cannot be categorically stated that these properties are vacant’.
‘We operate in a desirable region and some of these properties may be holiday homes or homes that are occupied for only parts of the year.’
The figures for ’empty’ apartments are more difficult to obtain, according to a Mackay Regional Council spokeswoman, because ‘there are a significant number of residential units/complexes that feed off a single meter and it will depend if each unit/complex are separate parcels of land (lot and plan).’
In response to the rental issue, Brisbane Mayor Adrian Schrinner announced ‘significantly higher rates’ for landlords who ‘turned homes into mini hotels,’ including letting space on Airbnb.
‘If owners have these properties in the market for a short term, that is their choice, but what they’ll be facing now is a 50 per cent increase in their rates.
‘We’re excluding (those that rent out) individual rooms. This is about people who rent out the whole house.’
According to ABC News, Queensland Council of Social Service CEO Aimee McVeigh stated that state funding had not kept pace with the housing problem and that accelerated building of social housing was imperative.
‘We have more than 50,000 people on our social housing register. That has grown by almost 80 per cent in the last four years.’
Ms McVeigh added: ‘In the last 20 years, Queensland’s population has grown by about 48 per cent and the Queensland government is saying we’re expecting an additional 1.4 million people into the state in the next decade.’
The Federal Government enforces vacancy fee fines against international buyers who leave their real estate investments vacant.
According to the Australian Taxation Office, fines totaled $2.3 million in 2021, $3.7 million in 2019/20, and $1.8 million in its first year of collection (2018/19).
According to Karl Fitzgerald, director of advocacy at Prosper Australia, overseas investors are not only to blame for empty or underutilized houses, with ‘speculative vacancies’ by Australian investors limiting supply and driving up prices, according to The Courier Mail.
He stated that governments should minimize the incentives for short-term gain from housing.
According to the most recent SQM Research data, Brisbane’s rental prices increased by 22% in the last year to $610 per week, with apartments increasing by 11.2 percent to $430 per week.
The persistent problem forced one young family of four seeking to find a place to live to live in a tent when their landlord sold their rental.
Sushannah Taylor, 20, spends every day looking for a suitable campsite in Bundaberg, Queensland, where she may spend the night with her husband Tristan, 22, and their two daughters Delilah, two, and Luna, six months.
The family had been stable and comfortable in their long-term rental house in Roma, six hours distant in the state’s southwest, until a month ago.
‘We had a nice little rental out in the country and we’d been there for about two years. But our landlord sold the house and we couldn’t find another rental in time, plus our area had become unaffordable to rent in,’ Sushannah told 7News.
‘We miss out on a lot of nutrition, basic hygiene is difficult to maintain, it gets really overheated in the tent and then it gets really cold.’
The family is a victim of the country’s devastating rental market, which has seen property prices jump and availability diminish due to high demand.
Sushannah stated that they had exhausted all efforts to find long-term housing, and that all homeless shelters she has called are all full.
She stated that the couple has bonded to move into a rental, but there is no affordable accommodation and the market is quite competitive.
Rental costs in most capital cities have climbed by double digit percentages in the last year, with analysts projecting that this trend will continue as interest rates rise at the quickest rate in more than a decade.
Anglicare Australia reported in April that only five of 45,000 rentals were affordable for a single person on a low income.