Housing & Renting

This bill implements 2025-26 State Budget measures and makes amendments across seven Acts. It extends the doubled First Home Owner Grant and the payroll tax rebate for apprentice and trainee wages, introduces windfall tax provisions to protect state revenue if foreign property surcharges are struck down by courts, clarifies SPER registration fees, validates a renewable energy generation authority transfer, and reforms Budget Estimates hearings.

This bill removes stamp duty for first home buyers purchasing new homes or vacant land in Queensland, lets home buyers rent out part of their property without losing their duty concession, and exempts medical practices from payroll tax on wages paid to GPs. It delivers on commitments made during the 2024 State Election campaign.

This private member's bill proposed a two-year freeze on all residential rents in Queensland at August 2022 levels, with ongoing caps of 2% every two years thereafter. It responded to record rent increases (over 20% annually in Brisbane) and near-zero vacancy rates across the state. This bill was discharged and did not become law.

This bill modernises Queensland's building and construction laws across several areas. It strengthens homeowners' rights to install solar panels free from aesthetic restrictions by developers and body corporates, expands the use of treated greywater in large buildings, improves subcontractor payment protections, and gives the Queensland Building and Construction Commission stronger regulatory and enforcement powers.

This bill supports two housing reforms: enabling the Homes for Homes charitable donation scheme to operate in Queensland, and improving financial transparency in retirement villages. Homes for Homes allows property owners to voluntarily donate a portion of their sale price to fund social and affordable housing. The retirement village changes give residents better access to financial information about how their fees and charges are spent.

This bill proposed an Empty Homes Levy to tackle Queensland's housing crisis by taxing vacant residential properties and undeveloped land at 5% of their capital improved value each year. Modelled on Vancouver's empty homes tax, which reduced vacancies by 24%, it aimed to push an estimated 20,600 vacant homes back onto the rental market over four years. This was a private member's bill introduced by Dr Amy MacMahon MP (Member for South Brisbane). It was discharged and did not become law.

This bill reforms Queensland's body corporate laws to address ageing unit complexes, pet ownership, smoking, off-the-plan property purchases, and scheme governance. It creates a new process for terminating uneconomic community titles schemes with 75% owner approval, strengthens buyer protections against sunset clause misuse in off-the-plan contracts, and clarifies residents' rights to keep pets and be protected from second-hand smoke.

This bill replaces Queensland's nearly 50-year-old Property Law Act 1974 with a modernised framework covering how property is bought, sold, leased, and mortgaged. It introduces a new statutory seller disclosure scheme requiring sellers to provide standardised information to buyers before contracts are signed, updates the law to support electronic conveyancing and digital transactions, and removes outdated provisions that no longer reflect modern property practice.

This bill strengthens protections for owners in older Queensland multi-owner developments (unit blocks, townhouses, mixed-use complexes) that are still governed by laws from the 1980s and 1990s. It brings these older body corporate laws closer into line with the more modern Body Corporate and Community Management Act 1997 by improving governance standards, financial transparency, and dispute resolution. It also enables the Office of Fair Trading to issue infringement notices for gift card breaches.

This bill reforms Queensland's rental laws to strengthen protections for renters, stabilise rents and ease cost-of-living pressures. It also introduces mandatory continuing professional development for property agents, removes compulsory superannuation contributions for local government employees, and fixes technical issues with community titles scheme terminations.

This bill reforms Queensland's laws governing manufactured homes in residential parks to better protect home owners from excessive rent increases and difficulty selling their homes. It caps annual site rent increases at the higher of CPI or 3.5 per cent, bans market rent reviews, creates a buyback scheme for unsold homes, and introduces new transparency requirements for park operators. The reforms respond to concerns from approximately 38,000 home owners across 203 residential parks in Queensland.

This bill transforms Economic Development Queensland (EDQ) from a primarily commercial development agency into one with an explicit mandate to deliver social and affordable housing. It gives EDQ new powers to acquire land, impose housing requirements on developers, invest in property assets, and lead coordinated urban renewal through new Place Renewal Areas. The bill also restructures EDQ as a more independent entity with its own CEO, board, and employing office.

This bill enables the federal Help to Buy shared equity scheme to operate in Queensland by referring specific legislative powers to the Commonwealth Parliament. Under the scheme, the Australian Government will contribute up to 40 per cent of the purchase price for a new home or 30 per cent for an existing home, helping low to middle income earners buy a home with as little as a 2 per cent deposit. Queensland is the first state to pass this legislation.

This bill reforms Queensland's rental laws to give tenants stronger protections and greater security. It ends no-grounds evictions, introduces minimum housing standards for all rental properties, strengthens protections for people experiencing domestic and family violence, creates a framework for renting with pets, and shields tenants from retaliatory action by landlords. It also exempts resident-operated freehold retirement villages from mandatory buyback obligations.

This bill would have removed state-imposed caps on infrastructure charges that local governments can levy on property developers. It lapsed at the end of the 57th Parliament and did not become law. Introduced by Greens MP Michael Berkman, it aimed to give councils the flexibility to charge developers the true cost of providing infrastructure like parks, footpaths, and flood mitigation in growing communities.

This bill implements several revenue measures from the 2023-24 Queensland State Budget and makes technical changes to state tax laws. It introduces tax concessions to encourage large-scale build-to-rent housing with affordable housing components, extends payroll tax relief for regional businesses and employers of apprentices, simplifies land tax for homeowners, and clarifies that state tax refunds can only be obtained through the statutory process.

This bill implements revenue measures from the 2024-25 Queensland State Budget. It makes home ownership more affordable for first home buyers by increasing stamp duty concession thresholds and doubling the First Home Owner Grant to $30,000, while increasing taxes on foreign property investors and absentee landowners, and extending payroll tax relief for employers of apprentices and trainees.

This bill extends Queensland's temporary COVID-19 emergency laws until 30 September 2021, continuing protections and flexible arrangements across tenancy, courts, corrections, gaming, and other areas. It also gives local governments new powers to adjust rates mid-year, hold COVID-safe by-elections, and continue remote council meetings.

This bill amends Queensland's planning laws to address the housing availability crisis. It gives the State new powers to acquire land for development infrastructure, creates a streamlined 'state facilitated application' process for priority housing developments, introduces an Urban Investigation Zone to manage growth areas, modernises outdated Development Control Plans, reduces red tape for urban encroachment registrations, and updates various operational aspects of the planning framework.

This bill was Queensland's second emergency legislative response to the COVID-19 pandemic, passed in April 2020. It created temporary powers to protect residential and commercial tenants from eviction, enabled Parliament and courts to operate remotely, established a Small Business Commissioner, and allowed legal documents to be witnessed electronically. All provisions expired on 31 December 2020.