Victoria should not accept mediocre Housing Scorecard result

HIA Executive Director, Victoria, Keith Ryan said "The Housing Scorecard result can only be described as mediocre when one considers the size of the Victorian economy and the growing population which should be fuelling a stronger home building industry.

"In the 2010s Victoria was a leader in the Housing Scorecard and should have retained this leadership this decade. Instead, since the COVID pandemic began Victoria has fallen to the middle of the pack and seems unlikely to improve in the foreseeable future.

The HIA Housing Scorecard report presents analysis which ranks each of the eight states and territories based on the performance of 13 key residential building indicators against their decade average, covering detached and multi-unit building activity, renovations, housing finance and rates of overseas and interstate migration.

The number of detached homes being currently built in Victoria remains impressive but with home sales and commencements falling this pipeline of building work is shrinking rapidly. The multi-unit sector also remains weak and population growth in Victoria is over reliant on overseas migration. There is a widespread sense of pessimism in the home building industry.

Mr Ryan noted that "On some measures the city of Melbourne is now the largest in Australia. Melbourne has had an impressive history of being ranked as a most liveable city. Victoria more widely has many attractive places to live and work. There are so many reasons to want to be in Victoria. Our housing industry should be performing much better but is being held back by bad tax settings.

"In recent years the home building industry in Victoria has been hit with new and increased taxes. These include the new windfall gains tax, an expansion of the vacant residential land tax, increases in land tax and stamp duty, increases in payroll tax and more recently increases in Workcover premiums. Home builders also pay higher licensing fees and insurance fees as well.

"HIA acknowledges that Victoria's budgetary position is poor. Tax reform is however necessary to restore confidence to consumers and the housing industry. It is assumed that in this year's Victorian state budget there will be no positive tax reforms. This is a disappointing outcome. But it will be even worse if we see a repeat of last year's budget and following announcements with more new and increased taxes that can only discourage investment and make Victoria less attractive as a place to do business" concluded Mr Ryan.