News

Although there are laws across Australia to prevent discrimination, experiences of biased and subjective behaviour by landlords, real estate agents and fellow tenants occur across Australia’s private rental sector, according to new AHURI research. The research, ‘Understanding discrimination effects in private rental housing’, examines discrimination and existing policy, law and practice in Australia’s private rental sector.

With regional Australia becoming an in-demand destination during the COVID-19 pandemic, new AHURI research has examined international strategies and Australian case studies about how best to plan for the growth of regional cities.

Although Australia and Germany both exempt owner-occupied housing from capital gains and provide for negative gearing in the private rental sector, in Australia it underlies speculative inflation, while in Germany house prices are relatively steady due to a large private rental sector, low population growth, conservative lending by public financial institutions and rent regulations, AHURI research has revealed.

The National Agreement on Closing the Gap has for the first time included housing among its 16 key national socio-economic targets to improve life outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The targets in the refreshed strategy work across the following outcome areas: education, employment, health and wellbeing, justice, safety, housing, land and waters, and languages.

Almost 1.5 million new homes were built in Australian in the 10 years from 2006 to 2016 but the growth of housing stock in each state and territory was uneven, ranging from 26 per cent in Western Australia to just 12 per cent in New South Wales, new AHURI research reveals. Only the building boom of 2015 to 2018 pushed NSW to reach supply levels comparable with other states.