The Real Estate Institute of Australia (REIA) is putting together a summit focused on finding solutions to help ease the ongoing housing crisis, which is severely hurting regional Australia.
REIA has partnered with the Regional Australia Institute and Master Builders Association to put together the National Regional Housing Summit to ensure the unique requirements of Australia’s regions are catered for in the Australian Government’s housing agenda moving forward.
REIA President, Leanne Pilkington said the summit offered an opportunity to work together, identify what was working and come up with a solutions-based agenda.
“The problem is that there’s no one solution for the housing crisis,” Ms Pilkington said.
“We also have to be careful not to lump every region in with the others because they all have their own unique situations.”
Ms Pilkington said REIA hopes to bring together representatives from a variety of regions to look at finding specific solutions and examine case studies to help ease the crisis.
“The plan with the summit is to identify the regional housing solutions and work to give the decision-makers better information to help deal with the problems that they’re having in their individual locations,” she said.
“I think that there are a range of solutions that government need to look at and that’s across both state and federal governments.”
One solution Ms Pilkington is focused on at the summit is finding ways to incentivise investment.
“The fastest way to get more houses is to encourage private investment,” she said.
“Why not look at first homebuyer grants being able to be utilised by people who are buying their first home, but are not ready to live in it?”
She said another idea is for the government to do an audit of its regional property.
“There are so many properties that the government have control of that are vacant because they aren’t up to standard,” she said.
“They need to have a look at what the problems are, where they are, where the properties are, and get that stuff fixed.”
Ms Pilkington said there were also a lot of government-owned properties that have the ability to be redeveloped and turned into accommodation.
“There’s lots of different solutions that we need to have a look at,” she said.
“So this is not going to be a talkfest, it’s about finding good case studies and sharing the information across the country.
“So we would love as many regional agents to get involved as possible.”
The National Regional Housing Summit will be held in Canberra on 9 February at Old Parliament House.
Click here to register.
