5 Things I'd Do to Solve Australia's Housing Crisis 🗞️ Real Estate Market Wrap

1. Fix Approvals. Kill the Bottleneck.
2. Upzone Around Infrastructure
3.  Incentivise Builders & Developers
4. Protect Mum & Dad Investors
5. Migration Reform + Skilled Trades Boost

Also, congratulations to Thomas Crawford for being awarded '2026 Boutique Independent Agency of the Year' - REB (Real Estate Business)

Thomas contacted me a couple of years ago, and he said, "Tom, I'm doing 200 sales a year. I want to do half. I want to get closer to my family, lose 20 kilos."

He sent me a text message the other day. He's done all of that and made 215 sales in the last 12 months 👏🏻

Transcript

Auction Day Reality Check

SPEAKER_00 0:00

At one of the options today, I had uh a a bystander come up and say to me, Listen, Tom, I follow your market raps, and you have got an incredible ability of articulating the problem, but I'm not hearing a lot of solutions from you or from other people. And I said, What do you mean? I said, you know, I'm just, you know, an auctioneer as such. Anyway. He said to me, What if you were prime minister? What would you do? What would you do if you were prime minister? And you know what? I wrote out a few notes. What I would do if I was prime minister to save the problem. And before I go on, I just want to let you know, seven out of seven today, 100%, looks better than what it was. It was a slog. The prices weren't extraordinary. They were a grind. Often it was just one or two buyers. And you know what else we're seeing? We're seeing a lot of buyers drop off just before auction. Normally you'd hear an agent say, I'm expecting five to register, four would register. Right? You know what's happening now? They say expecting five to register, two are registering. One's dropping off just before the auction, one's dropping off a day before the auction. And that happens, is when you've got a bit of cajiness in the market. So getting back to what I would do if I was going to be prime minister of this country with an agenda to sort out the housing problem. Let me tell you what I would do. Number one is I would stop, I would stop looking at just using a tax lever for a quick fix. That's just band-aid stuff that we're seeing at the moment. You know what I would do? I would get approvals in 60 days or less. No more council winters. You don't get to sit on a DA for 18 months. I would blast a rocket through the councils, right? Because a lot of the times things are just bottlenecked there through the council. So what I would do is I would say approvals in 60 days or even automatic approval. Number two, I would upzone around train stations. So wherever there's train stations and there's units, I would look at improving the rezoning so you could even build higher. I mean, there's shops there, there's transport there, there's people hanging out there, there's 7 Elevens there, there's gyms there. Put people there. We've got a very big country in Australia. We've got no shortage of land. But throwing people out in the middle of Australia without a train station, with no jobs, they're not going there, right? So the next thing I would do. So number two, up zone around train stations, and I would make sure that I would be building around infrastructure. And I would stop to be pretending we've got no land. Get real. Go open up Annapolis. Look at Australia. It's massive. Number three, you know what? I would do tax incentives. I would do tax incentives for people to actually build, right? I would actually, you know how there's a 5% deposit scheme for buyers? I would have some scheme attracting builders and developers to build. Man, let's get those cranes back up in the sky. Number four, I would, and most importantly, I would protect mom and dad investors. I would protect the people that are working, making$80,000 a year, that buy one or two properties to actually build financial security in their life so they're not eating baked beans at 69 years of age. That's what I would do. And I've got to tell you, if you want to actually improve the housing situation with tenants, you don't squeeze investors out. You don't do that because then rents explode. And then number five, you know what I would do? I would reduce migration, number one, and then what I would do is I would get picky with my migration. You know what I'd do? I would go and find people that are skilled. Go to Fiji, go to China. I go get tradespeople and say, listen, there's work here. You can make heaps of money here. I would increase the supply of tradespeople because part of the problem that we're having at the moment is the cost to build and labor cost. That's what I would do. And I've got to tell you, you fix approvals, you land labor and confidence, and you know what you've got? You've got a great marketplace again. Because if all you're doing is the quick, easy fix, which is let's create a tax to try and change behavior, all you're doing is putting band-aids. The issue is supply. It's not going away. And I can see why the government is actually deflecting, because if you actually opened up the spreadsheet and looked at target of new buildings versus actuals, they're failing miserably. If they were working in a job, they would have been sacked by now. Anyone that is so bar behind their actual goals, targets versus actuals, would have got the sack. Right. End of story. So, team, anything else I want to talk to you before I go in and keep working out because the soccer's going to start in a moment. And that is, oh yes, man, I've got to tell you, there was congratulations to all the award winners at the REB. But I got a beautiful, beautiful note from Thomas Crawford from Crawford Duran. And he actually, I'm actually going to post it up on social media. He won the award, Boutique Agent of the Year, right across Australia. And he contacted me a couple of years ago and he said, Tom, I'm doing 200 sales a year. I want to do less. Think about that. I want to do less. I said, What do you want to do, Thomas? He said, I want to do half. I go, what do you want to do? He goes, Tom, what I want to do is actually make less sales, get closer to my family, lose 20 kilos. And he sent me a text message the other day, and he's done all of that. And I've got to tell you, to me, I'm trying to find it here. Listen, all I'm saying to you is, I changed as a coach as I've got older. Because if your coach only makes you more money, that doesn't make you a better human. You haven't got a coach. All you got is some sort of consultant. A real coach works on the whole person. You can't ask someone to have courage at a listing presentation if they're avoiding hard conversations at home. You can't have discipline in prospecting if their health, sleep, and habits are in chaos. And that's why, in coaching, you're failing as a coach unless you're working on the whole person. You don't want to build the richest agent in the cemetery.