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Occasionally you hear something that beggars belief — something so absurd you have to ask for the information to be repeated to ensure you heard it correctly the first time.
Australians investing $1 billion in affordable housing in the United States yet virtually nothing at home is worthy of such a double-take.
While the term 'affordable housing' becomes something of an oxymoron in Australia, we are helping make America great again.
Individuals aren't choosing to put their money into the US affordable housing market, but Australian superannuation funds and investment houses are doing it for us.
Why is it so?
The Australian property market is driven by owner-occupiers and the capital growth of property sales.
Most rental properties are still designed for the owner-occupier market to realise the same capital growth.
Unlike in the United States, building properties to rent is almost unheard of in Australia.
The US projects attracting the Aussie dollar are called 'multi-family properties" and are built for long-term leases of 10 years or more, with a percentage of most projects dedicated to social housing.
Long-term renting is also unheard of in Australia.
Daryl Browning, the CEO of Industry Super Property Trust, said there was no specific build-to-rent housing product in Australia.
He hopes a cooling of the property market coupled with new government incentives to invest in affordable housing will change the local housing landscape.
"The industry's very adaptive," he said.
"I think you'll get developers starting to say OK, I can't get my profit by building pre-selling apartments, I'm now going to look at perhaps a pile of projects where I will build all of the apartments, but I will hold them for rent and see how it goes."
'We've failed as a community to provide housing for all'
With affordable housing in Australia having plummeted from 15 per cent to 3 per cent of the market in some areas, the need for built-to-rent projects is urgent.
The Dean of Architecture at Monash University, Shane Murray, said the housing affordability crisis had become a disaster for Australian society.
"A growing and larger percentage of our community is in housing stress, so I think we've failed as a community to be able to provide a range of housing for all of our citizens," he said.
Professor Murray represents an alliance of the universities of Melbourne, Monash, RMIT and Swinburne which have joined forces to lobby for greater access to affordable and social housing.
"I'd particularly like to see opportunities for our key workers our low socio-economic members of the community to have more choice," he said.
"Workers like policeman, nurses, teachers can't actually live in areas where they're working."
That type of project appeals to Mr Browning and industry super funds that have members struggling to put a roof over their head.
"I would say there is still ample money available if we can create the right product to attract some of that money in the sector in Australia," he said.
Until that happens, Australians can take heart knowing we are investing $1 billion to help give Americans a place to call home.
Topics: housing, housing-industry, government-and-politics, australia, melbourne-3000
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