In the middle of a housing crisis, developers are locking up land, waiting for it to get worse so they can sell it at higher prices.
While cutting immigration is the number one solution to the housing crisis, we also need to look at foreign-owned companies that seem to be waiting for house prices to get even more expensive before they build more.
Transcript
Senator ROBERTS: A car is the third-biggest investment cost of a person’s life, usually. Housing would be No. 2. Government is far and away the biggest cost during a person’s life. Let’s move on to housing. Are you doing any work in the property market in terms of land development? Some developers are acting like a cartel and keeping land locked away in the middle of a housing crisis, waiting for the demand get even bigger to raise their price. What are you doing in this space?
Ms Cass-Gottlieb: Our exposure will arise in mergers, and we reviewed what was voluntarily notified to us— a merger in terms of the function of masterplanned communities. It was an acquisition that brought together assets; Lendlease was selling some assets which went to Supalai. In relation to the Illawarra area, where we considered there would be too much concentration post the transaction, we required a divestiture in order to retain continuing competition. One exposure we have to this, and an important role we have, is merger control. With the reforms, if passed by the House, we will have much more visibility in relation to the transactions we need to look at. If we were to become aware of cartel conduct or reports of anticompetitive conduct, that would absolutely be within our enforcement remit against anticompetitive conduct. We do not have an overall supervisory function in relation to housing. It arises in relation to maintaining and promoting competition.
CHAIR: The committee advises that it is releasing the Productivity Commission; you go with our thanks.
Senator ROBERTS: Are you aware of any developers withholding land from the market to bump up prices?
Ms Cass-Gottlieb: I don’t believe we are aware of that, no.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you.
Perhaps the governments, both state and local, need to get rid of the taxes, regulations and approval times that make developing land so difficult and expensive for the developers. You can’t just blame the developers.