Hi there I'm Cam Sullings for Region Media. Well most of us
will know that housing affordability is a crisis point
in the nation's capital and running right alongside that is
rental affordability. HomeGround is an organisation
in Canberra that is at the forefront. We're here today and
we're going to learn more. It's a great opportunity. Maria
Edwards is the business development and property
manager at HomeGround and joins us. Hi Maria. Hi Cam. How you
going? Good. So for anyone who doesn't know about HomeGround
what is it that you do? Okay so HomeGround is a not for profit
real estate agency. We're the only one in the ACT. We were
set up about three years ago to try and tackle the
affordability challenge and we provide rental properties at
market rate and also affordable rates. So let's dig down a
little bit on that. How do you do it? Okay so landlords come
to us and they will have a look at their property. I do a
market appraisal for them and then we give them the
opportunity to look at renting it under the affordable scheme.
Landlords who do that rent their property at about 74.9%
of market rate and at that rate they are then exempt from
paying land tax on their property. So tell us about some
of the great success stories that you've had. Sure. So we
have let tenants from all backgrounds. Uh we try and help
tenants that are on on one income or they may be on two
incomes but lower incomes. Um they can earn up to
about 100000 a year. So one of the success stories we had was
a lovely young lady who was a single mom. She was living in a
one bedroom at her mum's house actually and she really needs
some space for her and her eight-month-old we had a
landlord who actually went out and bought an apartment for
her. It was a two bedroom ground floor apartment.
Beautiful. Um and the tenant went in there. She was able to
have space to study. She finished her teaching degree.
That little girl went to daycare just up the road. And
then when she finished a teaching degree she moved onto
a bigger and better property when she was earning more
money. Yeah wow so it's almost a a part of a journey for these
people that come in. Who who are the people that you find
are coming in to seek this sort of rental properties. Um so
there is a huge demand in at the ACT from all sorts of
people I guess everybody's struggling with the rental
market at the moment. Mostly as I said people are on medium
incomes that just you know they just need a bit of a break to
get to the next stage of their lives and that's it's a huge
it's a beautiful journey actually we go on with them so
that they've they can move into a property generally for
between one and three years to get some money behind them and
then they can move on to something bigger and better and
we've actually had people go on and buy houses. They've
actually been able to save up deposits. Yeah. Or finish
apprenticeships finish university even find new jobs.
Yep. And what about landlords? Who are you looking
at and who are the people that you deal with who are providing
these properties? Um we have the most wonderful landlords in
the world. So we we have properties of all types so
houses, units, townhouses, there's a need for everything.
Um the landlords that we have all have a social conscience
which is wonderful. All of our profits go to community housing
Canberra which then provides more affordable housing in the
ACT. Um so we're really looking for landlords who have any
property that would like to have it rented and would be
like like to make a difference in somebody else's life. You've been
working in the real estate business here in Canberra and
outside for a long long time. Are you enjoying this role?
It's really refreshing. It's amazing to actually be part of
something that the landlords and the tenants and even the
agency are all on the same team. We want this to work and
so there's a lot less us versus them. It's more about how do we
make this person's life better and you know there's also
obviously incentives for landlords to do it as well. So
yeah it's very holistic and it's wonderful. Yeah and
finally it it goes a bit wider than this as well. There's all
sorts of scholarship programs that you offer. There's lots of
things happening. Yeah so as I said it's quite a holistic sort
of journey that people go on. So once we've got affordable
tenants in the property we offer them the opportunity to
apply for scholarships for education, there's community
development events that we do so it's all sorts of ways we
try and help them get to that next stage of their journey
which is amazing. Yeah alright well let's look right down the
barrel of the camera. What's your key message to people with
properties, landlords? What would you like to say to them?
Um so any landlords who would like to have their managed by
HomeGround the simplest thing to do is to give me a call we
do properties not only at affordable rates we do them at
market rates and all of our properties all of the profits
go to community housing Canberra so it makes a real
difference whichever way you choose to go and there is some
significant tax incentives for landlords to do it so please
chat to me about those as well yeah Maria thank you so much
for joining it's been a really interesting conversation no
worries and congratulations on what you're doing okay
Homegroundrealestatecanberra.com.au is the website
click on it and learn more.