Help to Buy is a cruel hoax

Australians are hungry for housing solutions which work. It is therefore galling to see Labor & Housing Minister Clare O’Neil kick off the new year spruiking a policy in which most houses are ineligible. Help to Buy is a cruel hoax. 

Ms O’Neil’s social media posts from January this year clearly show freestanding houses which will never fit into the scheme. 

Based on new Corelogic data, most houses in every capital city bar Darwin do not fit into the Help to Buy scheme. In Sydney, only 14 per cent of houses fit into the scheme. In Brisbane, just 13 per cent of the houses are eligible, in Adelaide it’s just 6 per cent.

State based co-ownership schemes have seen low take up, because inherently, Australians don’t want to co-own their home with the government. 

The NSW Shared Equity Home Buyer Helper pilot program was a complete failure. An analysis of the NSW scheme found that it fell 94% short of its approval goals. 

Help to Buy has failed before, and it will fail again. 

Labor should look at practical solutions to build houses like fast tracking infrastructure and allowing people to use their own money in super for a deposit. They should stop holding out failed solutions as false hope for Australians already doing it tough.

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