INDUSTRY association REIWA says Swan, Kalamunda, Mundaring and Bassendean will all benefit from the state government’s effort to address the housing crisis in the budget.

REIWA president Suzanne Brown said the budget addressed election promises on stamp duty concessions for first home buyers, loans for modular housing as well as shared equity loans.

She said Swan was home to some of Perth’s more affordable suburbs.

“Prospective buyers will benefit from the recently announced increase to the threshold for the first home owner rate of duty.

More than $320 million was allocated in the budget for housing affordability and accessibility.

However, she said REIWA would like to see the thresholds pegged to the institute’s median and lower quartile prices to better reflect market conditions and ensure the concessions are available to as many first home buyers as possible.

“The bottom 25 per cent of the market is the appropriate place to allocate the most support as this is the portion of the market where many first home buyers would be aiming to purchase a home,” Ms Brown said.

The Cook government also extended the state’s rent relief program to the end of this year.

The program, which provided one-off payments of up to $5000 to help at-risk tenants pay rental arrears, was due to end this month.

Keystart’s build-to-rent (BTR) kickstart was allocated $75m in the Budget to provide low and no-interest loans for up to 10 years to assist in the delivery of BTR projects.

“BTR is an innovative solution that will create more rental supply but the current constraints in the building industry mean these projects are not cost-effective for investors,” Ms Brown said.

“We commend the government’s support in this space to help deliver these projects.

“Any future BTR projects are most likely to be seen in the City of Swan, particularly near the train stations, such as in Midland or Brabham, or in the Town of Bassendean, near the train station and where there might be land for redevelopment.

About $420m was allocated for social housing with $246m for the construction of social and affordable homes and $177.4m for maintenance.

“The challenging conditions of the past few years have seen WA’s social housing waitlist increase 38 per cent over five years to 20,700, according to the latest Bankwest Curtin Economic Centre (BCEC) Housing Affordability Report.”

In the budget, the government committed to using the funding to build 5800 new social homes.

Meanwhile the BCEC housing affordability 2025 report said funding for a minimum of 1200 new or repurposed social dwellings was needed per annum.

A government spokesperson said this year’s budget brought the Cook government’s investment in additional housing measures to $5.8 billion since 2021.

Premier Roger Cook said WA’s growing population pressured the state’s housing market.

“During the election, we took a range of commitments to the people of WA that I’m proud to say are funded as part of this budget,” he said.

Treasurer and West Swan MLA  Rita Saffioti said the government was looking at different angles to tackle the housing crisis.

“From supporting homebuyers to enter the market through our new Keystart shared equity scheme to exploring new ways of building houses faster and investing more into our social and affordable housing stock,” she said.