Housing rental is now utterly insane. It's not however, due to greedy landlords alone as in Qld for example, the State Govt has introduced rules which allow a tenant to make alterations to the building without the owner's consent.
Even the non-greedy landlords have to charge like wounded bulls because of our authorities idiotic mentality.
Let's face it, we must have some of the dumbest laws anywhere when someone can do an unauthorised entry & when they hurt themselves they can sue the owner.
Dumb Laws don't come from intelligent authority, they come from dumb authority !
Desperate people should really try to get into Judges' or Police officers' homes & politicians' homes & do alterations to the homes !
By the time the authorities get their act together the publicity of it will sort out this crisis !

Indy,

As usual you have a bee in your bonnet over the State Labor Government, which in my opinion is approaching its used by date, and should be replaced. But I don't simply blame some thing which I am not aware of; " the (Qld) State Govt has introduced rules which allow a tenant to make alterations to the building without the owner's consent." This could be anything from putting up a picture on the wall to adding a second story. Where is this new rule in the news, can you post a link. We have rental property in NSW, and I am not aware of any changers in the law there.

What is pushing up rents is the old supply and demand rule, high demand, little supply. Increasing mortgage rates is not helping. Government, state and federal can do a number of things to reduce rents. Increase the amount of public housing will reduce rents, make more building blocks available, reduce or defer stamp duty, assist with owner/occupier finance and make it less attractive for investors by reducing tax incentives associated with negative gearing, all will reduce rents. One thing that could be a winner, is many Aged Pensioners are occupying underutilised dwellings, one pensioner in a three bedroom home for example. Means test the pension in relation to the home ownership, then there would be an immediate increase in supply of family homes, for those truly in need. Put simply, a single pensioner, and couples as well, living alone in a million dollar house will be afforded the opportunity of swapping said house for a one room government dwelling in the newly created outer suburb of 'Sunny Gulag'. There are thousands of under-utilised tents and caravans around Brisbane, which could be immediately towed or erected at Sunny Gulag, ready for old folk occupation.

Indy, what would you prefer, a tent or a caravan?

indy: "Govt has introduced rules which allow a tenant to make alterations to the building without the owner's consent."

I'm having trouble believing this claim, can you provide a link?

But besides that, the general flavour of the post I agree with. I personally own about half a dozen lots of vacant residential land outright and could effortlessly build houses on (ie: no loan required) to rent out. However, for me it is simply to risky for the small rewards on offer to be worthwhile to invest in housing stock. I won't build new houses and rent them because:

- after paying a real estate firm to manage the properties* there would not be much actual return.

- since they would be brand new buildings, there is a very good chance that the cost of depreciation due to the allowable wear-and-tear (and worse still deliberate outright damage) by the tenants would cancel out a significant portion of the rental returns.

- the laws about maintaining the properties are ridiculously strict and can result in serious penalties if you breech them- it's stress that I can do without. (eg: having a faulty smoke alarm when the tenants move in- something that you can easily overlook but might have significant legal consequences).

- these days tenants are to hard to evict if they turn out to be duds.

- I'm in the top tax bracket, so investing in appreciating assets to hold long term is, for me, preferable to earning personal income (even when considering negative gearing possibilities if I was to take out a loan to build) .

So for a safe investment as a safety net to back up my riskier ones, I own vacant land (vacant land only- no buildings) and let it appreciate in value.

*I could theoretically manage the properties myself but that is potentially a legal nightmare. The laws involving renting are so complicated these days that you need an experienced and knowledgeable person to manage your tenants plus it distances you from them.

Hey thinkabit,
I think you can get an exemption for land tax if you put a few cows or bees on your vacant land.
Find a cattle owner who will put a few cows on and manage them for you, split the profits, fill your freezer, and some a chunk in taxes.

Tenants able to alter a building without the landlord's consent? With the landlord paying, probably! 'Unbelievable' would have been the reaction once, but who knows what is likely to happen in the lunatic asylum Australia has become.

But, as far as rents and affordable housing goes, the crunch has arrived. We have been living in a fool's paradise for the last 75 years, and those who ignore history are in for a very big shock.

In the years of owning a couple of rental units, we have been lucky to never have suffered wilful damage, some accidental damage, but nothing that couldn't be fixed. Been lucky with rent, never had absconders nicking off. The best thing about property is capital gain, our units are worth up to 3 times what I paid for them, but they don't generate a lot of cash flow. At retirement owning property and cash assets effects the Aged Pension, there are many old farts getting the Aged Pension simply because rather than planning for retirement they chose to piss it up against the wall. So be it, so the wife tells me.