The Queensland Greens say their proposal to tax investors for vacant homes could see tens of thousands of properties returned to the rental market during a nationwide housing crisis.
The bill, introduced into parliament on Thursday, proposes charging investors a 5% levy of the value of their residential property or land if it has been vacant for six months or more in a year. It would equate to an annual charge of $43,200 on the median Brisbane house price of $864,000.
Properties rented out as short-term accommodation on sites such as Airbnb would also be impacted, if the owner has let the entire property out for more than six months.
The Greens said the bill is based on similar levies in Victoria, France and Canada, and is expected to bring potentially 22,000 homes – roughly a quarter of vacant residential properties – back to the rental market.
Fiona Caniglia, executive director at Q Shelter, said the state’s vacant properties desperately need to be better utilised.
“We support a systematic way of identifying buildings and land, appraising their suitability for housing now or towards a pipeline of future housing,” Caniglia said.
“The immediate crisis makes it critical that we realise any latent capacity in the market at it is while also working on medium and long-term answers.”
Tenants Queensland’s chief executive, Penny Carr, also backed an empty homes levy, saying the government needs to disincentivise people from leaving properties vacant.
Carr said the proposed levy should be part of a multifaceted response to the housing crisis, including the introduction of a landlord register that would collect data about the ownership of properties across the state.
“Building more public housing is important, but it is going to take a long time,” Carr said.
“We need to look at the short-term, medium-term and long-term, to get a solution in every little thing and put them all together.”
But the proposal was criticised by the state’s peak real estate body, which described the bill as “disappointing”.
The Real Estate Institute of Queensland chief executive, Antonia Mercorella, said the Greens’ bill was another attempt by the party to “tax their way out of this crisis and to pin the problem on property investors”.
Mercorella said investors were walking away from the long-term rental market “because of increasingly onerous rental laws that severely restrict their rights”.
“We’re not against the idea of looking for ways to bring more holiday homes on to the long-term rental market, but whacking a hefty annual tax on these properties to punish and strong-arm investors is not the answer,” she said.
“REIQ is advocating for stamp duty reductions to be offered to long-term investors in exchange for a minimum time commitment to keep an investment property on the long-term rental market.”
Under the bill, homeowners will not have to pay the levy if the property is their principal place of residence. Aged care facilities, hotels and hostels, retirement villages, and supported accommodation services would also be exempt from the levy, the Greens said.
“For too long, successive governments have propped up a housing system that favours profit for wealthy investors rather than housing for everyday Queenslanders,” said the Greens MP for South Brisbane, Amy MacMahon.
“We now see families living in cars and working people sleeping in their friends’ living rooms because it’s more profitable for an investor to land bank than to put a roof over someone’s head.”
The Queensland Council of Social Service chief executive, Aimee McVeigh, said she welcomed “all potential solutions” to fix Queensland’s housing crisis ahead of the state’s housing summit on 21 October.
“Fundamentally, we do not have enough housing for our growing and changing population,” McVeigh said.
“All of the proposals being put forward need to be examined thoroughly to ensure they will increase the supply of social and affordable housing.”
McVeigh said the state needed a range of measures to address the crisis, including 5,000 new social housing dwellings to be built every year for the next decade.
The opposition’s housing spokesperson, Tim Mander, said a fall in building approvals had exacerbated the crisis and those “fortunate to secure rental accommodation are paying more and more to keep their homes”.
Queensland’s housing minister has been contacted for comment.
