How an Airbnb could help solve Brisbane’s looming housing crisis
About 200,000 properties in Queensland were either vacant or used for short-term letting and could be used to solve a housing crisis caused by the recent floods.
Cash incentives could be used to shift holiday rentals into the long-term market (photo: Domain)
The Real Estate Institute and Queensland Shelter have teamed up to campaign for property owners to switch their properties out of the short-term or holiday market, like Air B&B, into the long-term market and help solve the looming housing crisis.
But they want the State Government to provide a cash incentive to owners to do it.
Queensland’s Housing Minister Leeanne Enoch said more than 20,000 homes in Brisbane were flooded to some degree and many were uninhabitable. The Government was using 54 hotels and motels as emergency accommodation for almost 1000 people.
However, even before the floods, housing the vacancy rate in Brisbane was 1.1 per cent in January, according to SQM Research.
REIQ chief executive Antonia Mercorella said displaced tenants and owner occupiers were hitting the market desperate for accommodation which was adding to already unprecedented demand for long term rentals.
“It’s difficult to see anyway that this wave of demand can be met without the support of property owners moving their properties to the long-term rental market,” Mercorella said.
She said the Government could provide incentives for people to make the switch.
“We are pleading with people with empty properties, or properties let on the short-term rental market to consider the many benefits of bringing those homes or apartments on the long-term rental markets. This is a crisis and we need every available property we can find to come into the market,” she said.
Mercorella said many of the holiday or shor-term rentals received a big return so a cash incentive from the State Government would be needed to help reimburse for losses.
“We can’t just expect that people will simply hand over their properties given their own commercial needs and interests,” she said.
Q Shelter executive director Fiona Caniglia said the number of people facing homelessness would grow significantly unless more properties came on to the market.
“The longer people live with the anxiety of not knowing where home will be, the greater the impact on our society,” she said.
“Every vacant property that could be tenanted could be a home for someone going through the challenge of flood recovery.”
The State Government has been approached for comment.
