Housing News Digest
Housing News Digest
The Tenants' Union Housing News Digest compiles our pick of items from all the latest tenancy and housing media, sent once per week, on Thursdays.
Below is the Digest archive from November 2020 onwards. From time to time you will find additional items in the archive that did not make it into the weekly Digest email. Earlier archives are here, where you can also find additional digests by other organisations.
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See notes about the Digest and a list of other contributors here. Many thanks to those contributors for sharing links with us.
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Archive
Rental inspection checklist: Tips to organise your home
Lauren Vardy (No paywall)If you rent a property in Australia, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll experience a routine rental inspection during your tenancy. These inspections can cause stress because many tenants don’t know what to expect (or what’s expected of them!) Thankfully this rental inspection checklist will reduce your stress levels and help you prepare for your next routine inspection. (Rent.com.au)
# Australia, Privacy and access, Rent.Senior MPs see their investments soar as property markets run hot
Shane Wright The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Cabinet ministers and their opposition counterparts are riding the housing price boom even better than the general population with increases of almost 50 per cent or $585,000 in their home suburbs and across their rental property portfolios. ... [Professor Hal Pawson] said he expected politicians to put aside self-interest when looking at housing policy. “They do have skin in the game,” he said. “It might be difficult when it comes to tax policy around investment properties given just how many politicians own rentals, but I still think most will make decisions for the right reasons,” he said.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/senior-mps-see-their-inv…
# Australia, Federal Government, Home ownership, Housing market, Landlords and agents.Investors look to buy homes to use as Airbnb rentals
Patrick Clark (No paywall)Investors hunting for returns in the frenzied U.S. real estate market are tapping a new strategy: building massive portfolios of houses to rent out on Airbnb. (The Spokeman Review)
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/jun/25/investors-look-to-…
# International, Rent, Housing market, Landlords and agents, Short-term holiday letting.Tree cut in half in neighbour row over driveway pigeon poo
BBC (No paywall)From the United Kingdom ... A neighbourly dispute over a tree between two drives turned into a "war" when one homeowner cut the intrusive evergreen in half.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-57598101
# International, Neighbours.How to grow vegetables and fruit trees while renting
Koren Helbig ABC (No paywall)Anna Matilda has lived in five different rental houses in the past decade — and sustained a thriving veggie patch at each one. She even has fruit trees that travel happily with her from home to home. Her secret? The Naarm (Melbourne) permaculture gardener grows almost all her food in pots.
https://www.abc.net.au/everyday/how-grow-vegetables-and-fruit-tr…
# Australia, Rent, Health.Apartment building owners and managers urge plans for dealing with COVID-19
Sue William Domain (No paywall)Apartment buildings have the capacity to be super-spreaders of COVID-19 “like vertical cruise ships”, but the state government has completely ignored the potentially catastrophic dangers, those in the sector claim. With one of Sydney’s biggest apartment towers now in lockdown after a resident tested positive to the highly infectious Delta variant, angry apartment owners and professional managers have accused the authorities of negligence. “We’ve got shared airconditioning systems, shared lifts, shared common areas like lobbies, stairways, lounges, gyms and pools, and yet when someone comes down with COVID, there are no clear guidelines or advice on what to do,” said Karen Stiles, the executive officer of the Owners Corporation Network.
https://www.domain.com.au/news/apartment-building-owners-and-man…
# NSW, Strata, Coronavirus COVID-19, Health.Rising property prices leaving thousands homeless while Government squanders windfall
(No paywall)The NSW Government is the beneficiary of an unexpected additional $1 billion in stamp duty from an out of control housing market but has failed to use this windfall to adequately invest in social housing to ensure people on low incomes across NSW do not end up homeless. While the Government boasts that housing prices in Sydney have surged 20% since the start of the pandemic homelessness services throughout NSW are struggling with increased demand due to rising rents for people on low incomes and low vacancy rates in many areas of NSW.
# NSW, Public and community housing, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19, Homelessness, State Government, Tax.Warning that social housing residents set to be hit hardest by end of COVID support
Dominic Brady Inside Housing (Paywall)From the United Kingdom ... The economic divide between social housing tenants and the rest of the population is likely to increase when the government removes its economic support package, a report has warned.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/warning-that-social-ho…
# International, Public and community housing, Coronavirus COVID-19.