Those homes located in metro Sydney that have been left vacant or unoccupied would be subject to a tax rate increase. According to a report from smh.com.au, this plan is to alleviate the current housing shortage currently being experienced by the city.
According to latest figures, there are about 10,000 homes around Sydney's Central Business District that were found vacant. Overall, greater Sydney, which extends to the Central Coast, has over 120,000 units vacant as found in the recent census.
This was confirmed by Federation of Housing Associations CEO Wendy Hayhurst. She said, "Many of these are 'city homes' for people who visit a couple of times a year or investment properties sitting empty."
The thrust of the Federation, which represents providers of affordable housing, is to further local change despite the issue of affordability, as well as negative gearing and land tax.
Hayhurst added, "This is an idea the City of Sydney can act on now. Given the scale of the affordability problem, we need to look at everything."
The city government for its part, through a statement from its state treasurer Gladys Berejiklian, said that the way to go about it from the government's point of view is not to touch on affordability through levies, by through the increase of supply.
This is but a microcosm of the overall issue besetting the country. According to a report on globalpropetyguide.com, home prices in Australia's eight prime cities for 2014 rose on the average at 6.8 percent. The figure was released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which when inflation adjusted would be at 6.47 percent.
The largest increase was in Sydney, with 12.2 percent, then Brisbane with 5.3 percent, Melbourne at 4.5 percent, Adelaide at 2.5 percent. Other cities with significant increases include Hobart with 2.2 percent, Canberra at 1.7 percent, Perth at 1.2 percent and Darwin with 0.8 percent.