It’s time for NSW landlords to have their say

REINSW chief executive officer, Tim McKibbin explained “the tenant perspective is well respected in the public domain, as it should be.”

However, given that “a healthy market is a balanced market”, he believes a balanced view on the issue can create an appropriately long-term view of the crisis by “enabling the views of all stakeholders to be heard.”

“That’s what this campaign is about,” he insisted.

“Everyone recognises the lack of rental accommodation is at crisis point,” he said, labelling the consequences for people unable to find a place to live as “tragic.”

According to the REINSW, the state’s vacancy rates in December last year indicated an end to the rental crisis is nowhere in sight, with Sydney’s vacancy rate 1.8 per cent at year’s end.

Mr McKibbin said the number of presented solutions to the crisis, which include caps on rents, removing landlords’ right to refuse pets, as well as “the ongoing labelling of property investors as ‘greedy’” as “driving the very people who provide homes to rent from the market.”

“Investing in residential property is increasingly a less attractive prospect.”

“If you need more homes for people to rent, you don’t disincentivise people from providing those homes,” he said, declaring that not everyone is in a position to enter home ownership with these people needing choice when they enter the rental market.

“If investing in residential property becomes less attractive, those people will have fewer choices than they have now,” Mr McKibbin said.

In order to engage with the campaign, property managers and investors are encouraged to head to the campaign’s site and complete a two-minute survey with the institute encouraging as many respondents as possible.

With politicians making announcements “with a time frame of no more than a few weeks in mind”, he stressed the housing crisis is a long-term problem that needs long-term solutions.

“Targeting and even demonising one part of the market in a short-sighted attempt to appease another is not working. Residential property investors are leaving in the market and would-be investors are choosing to put their money elsewhere,” he concluded.