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.
