Devastating truth that’s driven rent controls onto agenda

The spectre of rent controls now hangs over the property market in Queensland. Here’s what’s really to blame.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is, predictably, copping an enormous backlash for floating the idea that there may need to be some kind of limits placed on rent increases.

No details have been worked out, with the issue to be discussed at a Housing Summit roundtable next week where a “range of options” will be put forward.

But the real estate industry is spitting fire, with predictions of a “bloodbath” in the market.

Their anger is misplaced.

It’s not Ms Palaszczuk who has really put rent controls on the agenda.

It’s the avaricious landlords who have shown extraordinary cruelty in jacking up rents by the maximum they can get away with, whether they need to or not.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

Now let’s get some things absolutely clear. This columnist knows many property investors.

Most are ordinary people who have worked hard all their lives and are merely trying to ensure they are ok in retirement.

Rising property prices have made some look well-off on paper, but in reality these people are not what most people would regard as “rich”.

They are good people and good landlords, people of good conscience who do their best to look after their tenants.

They have been hit very hard by rising prices in the past two years, with maintenance costs through the roof and government-imposed costs also proving a heavy burden.

Among them I know people who have let properties to vulnerable families at very reasonable rates because they care about helping other people in their community, when they could have got a better return by offering up their properties for rent on the open market.

These are no slum lords.

Rising rental costs have forced many working families to move on.

But there is another far less savoury side to the market. In the course of writing for this newspaper, this columnist has encountered an extraordinary number of renters on the Gold Coast being treated abysmally.

I have spent time inside properties that are barely fit for human habitation – riddled with mould, suspect electrics and leaky pipes – because landlords for years have resisted doing even basic repairs.

I have met so many people in despair after being handed rent increases of up to $200 a week for incredibly basic properties.

According to SQM Statistics, the average cost to rent a house in the northern Gold Coast in March 2020 was $646 a week. Three years later it’s $1178.

Some people, unable to make the increases, have been forced to leave the Gold Coast entirely despite living their whole lives here.

Others are going without basics such as food and medicine, sending kids to school hungry, because the alternative could mean joining the growing ranks living in cars and tents.

Rents have risen by eye-watering amounts in many parts of the Gold Coast.

For sure, rising costs and mortgage rates have played a role in these increases, though one really has to question the soundness of any investment that relies on interest rates remaining at historic lows indefinitely.

But outside those people there is also a significant minority of landlords who own multiple properties, are not servicing big mortgages and are simply cashing in.

This column was told by one contact recently about a longstanding friend whose company they could barely endure any more because
they spoke too often, with unconcealed delight, about how their rental income had soared.

Good landlords, as well as bad,
will pay a price of any government meddling.

Renters, too, could ultimately suffer if the whole thing is mishandled and more investors bail from the market.

But in reality it’s not Annastacia Palaszczuk who has forced the vexed issue of rent controls on the agenda.

No, it’s the rogue landlords taking maximum advantage of market conditions, treating ordinary people appallingly in the process, and an industry that turns a blind eye to the worst of their behaviour.

Follow @keithjwoods

Originally published as Devastating truth that’s driven rent controls onto agenda