An Indian couple who have amassed 103 properties since moving to Australia from Fiji have warned that landlords are likely to raise rents as a result of Labor’s tax reforms.
Victor Kumar and his wife Reshmi, who bought their first property in 1998 and now rake in $2.1 million a year in annual gross rents from their real estate portfolio, said fear over the government’s Budget changes was the biggest threat to the market.
In last month’s Budget Labor scrapped the current 50% capital gains tax discount, and altered rules on negative gearing – which allows investors to deduct rental losses from their taxable income – so it only applies to new properties, with existing negatively geared properties unaffected.
But Mr Kumar, director of Right Property Group, told realestate.com.au the reforms were “not going to help the people it aims to help” and were already distorting prices, and predicted rents were about to surge.
“When your costs are going up, of course you will increase rent, and so when your rent’s increased, then that means that you’re not able to save as much for your deposit, and if you’re not able to save as much for a deposit, you’re not able to get into the property market,” he said.
“So it really isn’t as thought-out and planned as one would expect and certainly when you look at it from a grassroots level any change in that will impact the holding cost of a property [and] simply get passed on to renters.”
Mr Kumar said if the government really wanted to bring down entry-level housing prices it should reduce the cost of building new homes.
“If you’re truly trying to help the first homebuyers or the homebuyers full stop then you may want to take a slightly different approach of actually empowering a lot of the developments by taking away the red tape,” he said.
“If you look at the southwest Sydney corridor, just the price that you pay for red tape is circa $150k to $170k for a standard house. That’s how much you pay the councils, the local government, the water board and all that just to build a house.”
According to the latest data from ProTrack, the national vacancy rental rate increased to 1.37% last month, the highest it has been since January 2025, but capital city rental availability is still 42% lower than in 2021.
PropTrack senior economist Luc Redman said renters in the major cities were facing a tight market.
“It’s fair to say that the rental conditions are still tough,” he said.
“Being 40% down in the capital cities from five years ago is certainly a problem and rental stress is still very high.”
Header image: Left, Victor and Reshmi Kumar (Instagram). Right, a rental queue in Sydney (X).
The post Indian Fijian immigrant couple with 103 properties warn rents set to rise first appeared on The Noticer.
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