If you’ve been reading the headlines recently you may have stumbled upon predictions of doomsdays ahead for the property market should one party or the other win and succeed in introducing their policies.
Here’s the thing…don’t believe a word of it.
Since the mid 1990’s, housing investors have tended to drift towards positive gearing rather than the odious alternative. The last time negative gearing was tinkered with, commentators will have you believe that the rental market dried up overnight. Bollocks. The rental market tightened because interest rates were at record highs and no property (investment or owner occupied) was selling. I know this because I was an investor at the time.
We see many potential investors waiting in the wings to see who wins the election before they dive into property again. Presumably because they want to negatively gear and they’re afraid that if Labor gets in the property market will collapse. If they’re right, there will be buying opportunities.
By the way, Labor is not planning to ban negative gearing, it’s merely saying that if the expenses from your property investment are greater than your income, the rest of us shouldn’t have to pay for it via a tax deduction for you (you can still deduct expenses up to and equalling your total rental income). They argue that this policy change is required to arrest the rate of increase in property prices.
Again, bollocks.
Property prices will increase or decline based on demand and supply, interest rates, unemployment etc. While government policies can affect price growth, in this case the horse has already bolted. What has failed to keep up with the increase in asset prices is our incomes – note how none of the parties are even talking about this elephant in the room.
What is more likely to affect the prices of housing is something that no one in this country has any influence over. Brexit. While, it will probably have little real impact to our everyday lives, the problem is one of uncertainty. That uncertainty feeds into volatility in investment markets and can lead to investors staying away. When investors avoid investment markets, central banks react by flooding the market with liquidity (usually by lowering interest rates or printing money) and this has a habit of fuelling asset bubbles (particularly in real estate).
In Australia, the last time we had such a crisis was when KRudd was PM and he and his Government had the sense to listen to the experts in Treasury and the RBA (think Ken Henry and Glenn Stevens and their teams) – otherwise known more generically as public servants. These public servants are technocrats that will help the sitting government of the day steer through any global disasters.
Will it make any difference whether or not you had a Labor, Liberal or Greens in Government? Probably not during a crisis. My view is that the other side is nowhere near as bad as people or the media make out (think Kennett, Whitlam, Keating, Gillard and more recently Abbott). The sun still rose the next day and we all went about our business.
The Brexit crisis will settle and we will elect a government that we deserve – we always do.
So cast your vote as you will and let the chips fall where they may.