Chris Martin, a housing policy researcher at the University of NSW, has warned that Australia’s housing market is facing a “time bomb” as COVID-19 rental laws expire and welfare benefits are halved:
[Martin] said it was likely many tenants would be required to start paying back rent arrears they had accumulated when they reached the end of the Covid agreements they had brokered with landlords.
Martin acknowledged the housing market was changing, with falling rents and an increase in vacancies in many places, but also noted welfare payments such as jobseeker would by cut by half in September.
