The chairman of a leading real estate network has said he finds it “incredible” that most people calling for the abolishment of negative gearing built their own wealth from it.
Century 21 owner and managing director Charles Tarbey said he is “very concerned” over talks about the removal of negative gearing.
“There is concern that there is a focus by the RBA on investors,” he told Residential Property Manager.
“The talk about the removal of negative gearing, I find that incredible that most of the people who are calling for it have probably no doubt built their wealth off negative gearing.
“It should be mentioned that it is important people recognise that many people have built their wealth off negative gearing and they taking the opportunity away for future generations?
“That would be one of the things that would be a major problem for me, because I can see it looming,” he added.
Mr Tarbey said abolishing negative gearing will place an onus on the government to sort out supply.
“If they choose to go this way, we have an issue that hasn’t been resolved yet, and that is the substantial lack of supply to provide the current population and immigration growth,” he said.
“If you look at the marketplace we’re in right now, we still have a massive undersupply across most parts of the capital cities.
“If you take the investors out of the equation and you make it difficult for them, then somebody has to provide housing and that’s going to have to fall back on the government.
If it falls back on the government and the local governments and their planning departments then it’s going to be quite disastrous for a few years to come,” he added.