According to data from realestate.com.au, NRAS (National Rental Affordability Scheme) was the second most common search term for people looking at property to rent or buy in Queensland in searches on realestate.com.au in the six months to May 31.
The real estate website noted 51,416 searches for NRAS in that time frame, with the a Commonwealth Government program rent subsidy program. Taking first place was ‘pool’ with 197,487 searches.
Since mid-2017, CHIA has been talking to the Commonwealth Department of Social Services about the impending wind down of the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS).
Athough 198 incentives will expire in 2018, there are still 1,850 incentives still to be delivered so the overall pool of active NRAS dwellings will not actually fall until 2020.
After 2020, the rate of NRAS expiries will ramp up to a peak of 9,178 in 2024. By 2026, a total of 36,721 will have left the system.
Community housing organisations currently hold about 40 per cent of al NRAS incentives. Those NRAS subsidies are worth $140m pa plus a rental stream of between $210m and $500m. This is significant, given the 2017-18 Report on Government Services noted the total income from social housing rents was about $600m a year.
CHIA’s suggestions for easing the transition included:
a reduced rate NRAS (say $5,000) for another few years to encourage investors to keep the dwellings as affordable
putting any ‘handed back’ NRAS incentives into a pool and offering them to landlords to maintain expiring properties in the scheme [no cost to budget]
an ‘availability subsidy’ to take the place of NRAS to enable Community housing organisations to offer rental subsidies for particular groups, such as single aged renters or family violence survivors.
NRAS exits
Calendar Year
Number of Dwellings By State or Territory
ACT
NSW
NT
QLD
SA
TAS
VIC
WA
Total
2018
67
5
24
7
95
198
2019
32
433
181
179
59
286
50
1,220
2020
157
271
323
262
128
96
131
1,368
2021
393
380
12
1,080
515
153
261
266
3,060
2022
746
457
150
2,696
517
150
1,296
352
6,364
2023
93
605
125
2,499
806
25
1,356
1,110
6,619
2024
542
1,140
188
2,845
1,078
321
2,143
921
9,178
2025
60
1,188
532
603
240
98
501
891
4,113
2026
361
2,008
50
2
596
1,584
4,601
Total
2,384
6,549
1,057
10,232
3,623
1,537
6,034
5,305
36,721
DSS has kindly shared some unpublished data on the NRAS incentives held by community housing organisations that will expire year by year, state by state. The bulk of the community housing owned NRAS properties are in Queensland.