Housing Policy Focus

First-time home buyers – those who are in their 20s and 30s – are in the process of making major financial decisions and they are paying attention to candidate’s messages in the upcoming federal election.

As a consequence, a good deal of policy is focused on helping first-time buyers into the housing market.

Politicians are largely focused on ‘demand stimulus’ ideas. These are policies to help buy homes in our big cities, but where we don’t have enough homes for sale to satisfy the current demand, let alone increased demand.

Our politicians also need to address how these homes will be provided. In other words, lower barriers to building homes we need to meet the demands of a growing population.

Otherwise a surge of new buyers – increased demand with constrained supply – could cause prices to escalate and erase any benefit from stimulus packages.