REIA persists with negative gearing lies

This claim is false and downright disingenuous. The below chart plots the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) rental series from 1972, with the period where negative gearing losses were quarantined (i.e between June 1985 and September 1987) shown in red. As you can see, there was nothing spectacular about this period, with much higher rental growth recorded in earlier periods when negative gearing was in place:

Similarly, if we deflate the above series by CPI, in order to remove the effects of inflation, we again see that rental growth over the period when negative gearing was quarantined was nothing special, with periods of higher rental growth recorded both prior and subsequently:

Moreover, rents in real terms rose in only four capital cities and fell in four capitals:

If it was true that the abolition of negative gearing caused rents to rise, shouldn’t rents have risen Australia-wide since negative gearing affects all rental markets?

Now, let’s examine the REIA’s final claim:

The myth that negative gearing is a plaything of the wealthy also needs to dispelled. The majority of taxpayers with a negatively geared property earn less than $80,000 a year.

This is partly true. The majority (72%) of negatively geared investors do earn less than $80,000 per year:

However, the proportion of people holding negatively geared property also rises with income: