A new property tax - I don't think so

‘Tax homes’ was the headline screaming from one of the Saturday newspapers. Not my idea of a great read at the start a day of open for inspections. The idea suggests taxing owner-occupied homes as a way of ‘arresting soaring house prices’. What the??

Okay so reports indicate that Sydney is one of the least affordable property markets in the world.  But is taxing the family home going to address that problem? 

The people who walk through the door of our office looking for a home have worked out what kind of property they need and what they can afford to spend.  Sure they also recognise the property will represent their biggest family asset and want it to be a sensible investment.

But the affordability issue of Sydney property is not the result of over excited investors looking for ways to minimise tax. It’s the result of the imbalance between supply and demand that we learnt about in high school commerce lessons.

I certainly support the Coalition policy to repeal the property tax introduced last year for residential and commercial properties valued over $500,000.  It makes sense to me to be abolishing taxes that add to the cost of buying or building a home rather than introducing new costs.

And I’m not on my own.  That was definitely the view of most of the people I chatted with at our open for inspections on Saturday.