The strain on the housing market is palpable for homeowners after a number of years of rate rises as well as renters who are seeing their rents rise with every rate rise as well.
But spare a thought for those who have bought a home but still have to pay rent on their house site.
For thousands of residents across Logan who live in residential parks, which are otherwise known as lifestyle communities for over 50s, they have often sold their family home to purchase a house in these parks.
But while they own the houses, they don’t own the land they are situated on and so pay rent to the park operators for the site.
Those who have visited family and friends living in communities like Palm Lakes, Halcyon or the Living Gems parks will understand that the houses are not as re-locatable as the term residential park suggests.
Many, having downsized, buy their houses outright to provide them a level of certainty when living on a fixed income like the pension.
However, the rent they pay is subject to regular rent reviews.
Residents become particularly vulnerable when multiple increases exceed their fixed income, but they cannot move.
After extensive consultation with the various Homeowners Associations, the Queensland
Government has introduced new legislation which will seek to limit site rent increases and provide greater transparency for potential homeowners prior to purchasing a site in the residential park.
Many residents have found that low site rents were used to attract them to the parks whilst they were under construction, but were then heavily increased as the parks hit capacity.
The new laws will prohibit market rent reviews in new site agreements and stop them being used in existing site agreements.
Instead, the Bill introduced last week proposes a limit on site rent increases to Australian CPI or 3.5 per cent, whichever is the highest.
This means that those residents on a fixed income can have certainty in budgeting and have greater alignment with pension increases.
These changes are a long time coming and residents and their homeowner committees are invited to give feedback on the Bill over the next few weeks.
You can contact your local state members office to find out more details.
