Australian Property News

REIA puts forward proposal for comprehensive housing policy

Posted on Thursday, July 22 2010 at 4:37 PM

The Real Estate Institute of Australia (REIA) wants support from politicians for a comprehensive housing policy.

It has written to all the political parties and independent senators asking for support on their policy initiatives.

“The areas that we’re looking for action on are the First Home Owners Grant (FHOG), housing affordability, mandatory disclosure of energy efficiency ratings, national property taxation framework and the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) guidelines,” says REIA president David Airey, adding that each of these areas have been identified for improvement.

Some of the things the REIA is calling for include:

• Increasing the FHOG to $15,000 and indexing it to median house price movements annually.

• Allowing first homebuyers access to superannuation for the purchase of a home.

• Retaining negative gearing in its current form for the purpose of property investment.

• Committing to not imposing capital gains tax (CGT) on the family home, no matter what its value is.

• Committing to not increasing CGT on property investments.

• Improving competition in the mortgage market and ensuring that any advantage the big four banks have obtained over the smaller banks is mitigated.