The state budget has largely ignored Western Australia's flagging real estate market, and represents a missed opportunity to back the government's affordable housing strategy with economic stimulus, peak industry bodies say.
Property Council of Australia executive director Joe Lenzo said there was a strong commitment to social and major project infrastructure, but the budget was lacking in strategic initiatives to motivate the real estate market.
"Ordinary households and small businesses are not all sharing in the benefits of the resources boom and the best way to address this is to boost the real estate market," Mr Lenzo said.
"The budget also ignored calls for reforms of WA's unfair land tax system, which puts most of the land tax burden on a narrow group of property owners and investors.
This group of property owners are penalised each year with excessive increases in land taxes.
Real Estate Institute of Western Australia president Alan Bourke said despite the budget being pitched as a 'social budget', there was nothing in it to address affordable housing.
"If the government is serious about helping people into more affordable homes, including affordable rental accommodation, then it needs to reduce the burden of stamp duty and the cost of land tax for owners with more than one property," Mr Bourke said.
"By reducing the entry costs of buying property and making land tax bills fairer, owners are more inclined to invest in property which nourishes the rental sector and helps keep median rents down."
Mr Bourke said private owners, which held 80 per cent of Perth's rental accommodation, needed to be encouraged to invest in property rather than be penalised for it.
He said the government should nurture the private sector to supply affordable rental housing.
Finally, Mr Bourke said he was very concerned with projected revenue figures from stamp duty over the next three years.
"The government seems to think that the property market is going to boom over the next few years and that money rolling in from stamp duty will fill up the treasury coffers," he said.
"This seems unlikely, but REIWA puts the government on notice that if stamp duty revenue is to grow at the exponential rate suggested in today's budget then it is absolutely critical that bracket creep is addressed so we don't see a huge blow-out in tax bills for people buying property."
