LISMORE MP Janelle Saffin has welcomed NSW Labor’s plan to abolish stamp duty for first home buyers buying a home worth up to $800,000 as taking real action to make housing more affordable for singles, couples and families.
“This fresh initiative, combined with other measures to ensure more fairness for renters, is good public policy and even better regional and rural public policy,” Ms Saffin says.
“How long have we waited for this? It is fantastic.
“Given the target is $800,000 or below that would cover people in the Lismore Electorate and the regions who need to have stamp duty waived to allow them to get into their first home.
“Under our plan, an estimated 46,500 future homeowners in NSW will be paying no stamp duty or be able to claim a heavy discount over the first three years of a Minns Labor Government.
“We will provide this much-needed stamp duty relief by scrapping Premier Dominic Perrottet’s dreadful land tax on the family home.”
NSW Labor Leader Chris Minns and NSW Shadow Treasurer Daniel Mookey today jointly announced that Labor will abolish stamp duty outright for first home buyers buying a home worth up to $800,000, while offering a concessional rate to first home buyers purchasing a property up to $1million.
Independent modelling by the Parliamentary Budget Office shows that within the first three years of Labor’s changes, 27,700 first home buyers would have paid no stamp duty whatsoever. An additional 18,800 first home buyers would have paid a discounted rate.
This means that an estimated 95 per cent of all first home buyers in New South Wales will pay no tax or a reduced rate when they buy their first home.
With more housing policies still to be released, a Minns Labor Government has already committed to:
- Remove or reduce the stamp duty tax burden from 46,500 first home buyers over the next three years;
- Abolish the NSW Government’s forever land tax on the family home;
- Introduce a mandatory requirement for 30 per cent of all homes built on surplus government land to be set aside for social, affordable and universal housing;
- Provide longer term funding certainty for homelessness and housing support organisations and tenancy advocacy services dealing with the fall-out from the housing crisis
- Create a Rental Commissioner;
- Protect tenants from unfair evictions by requiring them to be given a lawful reason for terminating their lease;
- Banning the practice of secret rent bidding, which pits tenants against each other in bidding wars;
- Implement a Portable Bond Scheme to allow tenants to apply their current bond to their next lease;
- Make it easier for renters to have pets in their homes
- Host a renters’ roundtable to hear from stakeholders and community groups.
