Bradfield and Berowra among most unaffordable electorates to buy a home in Australia: Here's what your candidates want to do about that.

Recent data from property research and data company CoreLogic has ranked Bradfield as the most unaffordable electorate to buy a home in the country, with the median value sitting at $2,720,471.

Neighbouring suburbs Berowra, Warringah, and Mackellar trail closely behind as some of the most expensive suburbs to buy a house in.

So, in the electorates where the inflation of housing prices in Australia is most evident, what have the candidates for this election said they will do about housing affordability?

The Coalition

Liberal candidates hoping to take seats this election — such as Gisele Kapterian (Bradfield) — claim housing affordability as one of their key electoral priorities. The “housing affordability”’ section of Kapterian's webpage redirects voters to the federal Liberal Party website, which states the party’s plan for affordable housing. 

This plan revolves largely around reducing migration, providing assistance to first home buyers, and “cutting red tape”. 

Appearing on Monday evening’s Q&A, outgoing Bradfield MP Paul Fletcher, who announced his retirement from politics last year, spoke to the Coalition’s housing platform and championed the policy of allowing first home buyers the ability to access up to $50,000 from their superannuation in order to make a deposit on a first home. 

This policy has been criticised as likely to only further increase housing demand, driving prices higher without providing a definite solution for buyers.

The Coalition's plan to make superannuation accessible and mortgage interest tax-deductible for first home buyers is accompanied by a promise of $5 billion to support housing infrastructure.

Currently, the Labor government already has a similar — albeit, smaller — policy in place, providing $1.5 billion to housing infrastructure.

Labor

Looking to the Labor candidates of the North Shore — such as Louise McCallum (Bradfield)  — we find a similar toeing of the party line.

Labor's key policies going into this election specifically target first home buyers, offering 5 percent deposits on homes, and an investment of $10 billion to build up to 100,000 homes exclusively for first time buyers.

Speaking to the Lorikeet, McCallum said she would like to continue to explore the Labor Party’s continued increase of rental assistance, and joked she’d “like her kids to move out one day.”

“We have so many families and young people living here, and what I’m hearing most is concern for the next generation,” she said.

“People want to know: what is the government doing for our children?”

In the seat of Bennelong, which does not feature in Corelogic’s Top 20 most expensive electorates but has experienced increasing population and housing growth, Labor MP Jerome Laxale will be up against Liberal candidate Scott Yung.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Lorikeet, Laxale said there were already 380 new social and affordable homes and 1000 built-to-rent apartments being built in Meadowbank and Macquarie Park as part of Labor’s housing policy. 

Yung, similarly to Kapterian in Bradfield, defers to the Liberal Party’s broader housing policies. 

Experts have been critical of both major party platforms, finding neither does enough to address the lack of affordable supply. 

Considering, too, that the focus of both major parties has primarily been on providing assistance to first home buyers rather than lowering the cost of housing overall, there is little chance that the prices of housing in suburbs like Bradfield will lower any time in the near future. Even with Labor’s 5 percent deposit scheme, the median property would require a deposit of around $136,000.

Beyond the major parties

What’s certain is that neither major party wants to shake up the housing market too much.

Only a handful of minor parties — such as the Greens and the Jacqui Lambie Network — are willing to run with housing policy that proposes changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount. The electorates of Berowra, Bennelong, and Bradfield all have Greens party candidates running.

Independents in the area, such as Nicolette Boele in Bradfield, show a desire to push existing Labor initiatives further in their housing policies. Two of Boele’s key housing policies are aimed at the expansion of the Help-to-Buy and Housing Australia Future Fund policies: both introduced by Labor, and both opposed in parliament by incumbent MP Fletcher. 

The Help to Buy scheme is a shared equity scheme through which the government loans part of the upfront purchase of a house to the buyer. With this equity contribution from the federal government, eligible first home buyers can take out a loan with a deposit of 2 percent.

The Housing Australia Future Fund is a much simpler policy to understand: it is a fund established to support and build social and affordable housing, as well as supply acute housing needs such as housing services for Indigenous communities, women, children and veterans.

While Boele aligns with Liberal initiatives such as the investment in infrastructure and a commitment to “cut red tape”, her housing policy page strongly opposes the Coalition’s policy of early access to superannuation.

Other North Shore independent candidates, like Bradfield’s Andy Yin, have placed the blame for the region’s housing crisis on government inefficiency. Yin told the North Shore Lorikeet in April this inefficiency was “very significant.”

“Why can’t we have fewer regulations without sacrificing quality?”

In Warringah, which CoreLogic ranked 15 in its list of most expensive electorates, MP Zali Steggall has proposed incentivising people to downsize and to also create tighter regulation on short stay rentals like Airbnb. Steggall said the government needed to shift its focus from being “reactive” to issues to focusing on prevention “in health, climate, and housing.”

“We need to stop incentivising rentals as just a wealth-building mechanism,” she told the Lorikeet. “Housing is a necessity for a thriving community. Unless we incentivise, nothing’s going to change.”

Finally, in Berowra, Liberal MP Julian Leeser has echoed the party’s plans to invest $5 billion into infrastructure to “unlock” 500,000 new homes across the country if elected.

During a speech in the House of Representatives last year, Leeser said the rapid increase in rental prices in Sydney has been “catastrophic” and blamed the housing crisis on a lack of supply.

Tina Brown, who is running as an independent in Berowra, told the Lorikeet in March she believed renting needed to be made more affordable and fair. 

“We’re renting out homes full of mould, with no solar initiatives or any initiatives addressing the climate or cost of living. Some landlords are fantastic and are looking after their properties, but some don’t care. They just want money.”