A Sydney property expert has claimed Australia could soon face a huge shift in the ownership of the nation’s rental homes.
Prominent auctioneer and real estate commentator Tom Panos has linked the federal government’s treatment of build-to-rent housing with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s recent description of Australia’s superannuation pool as a “national asset”.
Australia’s compulsory superannuation has amassed more than $4.4 trillion in combined retirement savings as the sector has grown and consolidated, giving major super funds huge investment capacity.
And Mr Panos claims that in the future, giant super funds may increasingly replace mum-and-dad investors as landlords.
With housing supply concerns dominating the discourse, the Albanese government has sought to attract superannuation and other institutional capital into housing.
Tax concessions have also been introduced to make build-to-rent more attractive. Some of Australia’s biggest super funds already own or back thousands of rental properties, and while their slice remains tiny compared with Australia’s wider rental market, the sector is growing quickly.
“Something Albanese said recently suddenly makes a lot of sense. A lot more sense,” Mr Panos told his followers in a recent Instagram update.
“He referred to Australians’ $4.5 (Panos has rounded up) trillion super as a national asset. That was just a week or two ago, maybe three. Now I’m connecting the dots.
“It’s starting to make sense. The government is actively encouraging large super funds and institutions to put money into build-to-rent. And it’s already happening.
“It sounds like Aware Super, I think, they’re already investing in developments containing hundreds of properties.
“Now, I’m not saying Albo is telling super funds to go buy your neighbour’s house. He’s not. But I do think we’re seeing the beginning of a structural change in Australian housing.
“For decades, much of the rental stock has been supplied by ordinary Aussies, mums and dads and their investments.
“In the future, your landlord most probably is going to be a $100 billion institution.
“The government says institutional money can help build desperately needed housing. Fair argument, right?
“But here’s the question, and I think it needs to be asked.
“Are we building a nation of property owners, or are we slowly building a nation of renters whose landlords are now going to be some of the biggest institutions in Australia, who might be partnering with the government?
“Because $4.5 trillion is a lot of money, and housing is clearly on the shopping list.
“Now it’s making sense. When he said it’s a national asset — our super.”
What Albanese actually said
At a superannuation lending roundtable in July, Mr Albanese said there was “real potential to see these funds as a national asset”, while arguing Australia’s retirement savings could generate better returns while playing a greater role in the domestic economy.
Former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews went even further at the same event, saying super should be invested in “productivity challenges like housing, infrastructure, energy transition, water, or dare I say, pandemic preparedness”.
Australia really does have roughly the amount of super Mr Panos cited.
APRA’s latest quarterly figures put total superannuation assets at $4.438 trillion at the end of March, up almost 8 per cent in a year. More than $3.1 trillion was held in APRA-regulated funds, with another $1.06 trillion in self-managed super funds.
Mr Albanese’s July remarks were made as part of a wider discussion about getting more Australian super money into domestic corporate debt and lending, rather than an announcement directing retirement savings into residential property.
Mr Panos is therefore connecting two existing government positions, rather than identifying an explicit housing policy.
Nevertheless, the federal government has been trying to pull large institutional investors — including extremely wealthy super funds — into Australian housing for years.
When Labor announced its National Housing Accord in 2022, Treasury said the arrangement would bring together governments, builders and institutional investors.
It went further, saying federal funding would “incentivise superannuation funds and other institutional investors” to put capital into social and affordable housing.
Mr Albanese himself said later that year the Housing Accord brought together institutional investors “like superannuation funds” to help address Australia’s housing shortage.
The resulting government policy has since made build-to-rent more attractive.
Unlike the traditional Australian model — where a developer builds apartments and sells them individually to owner-occupiers and investors — build-to-rent projects are generally constructed specifically to remain under the ownership of a large investor, which then collects rent from hundreds of tenants.
Federal tax changes reduced the withholding tax rate on eligible managed investment trust income from new build-to-rent developments from 30 per cent to 15 per cent and increased the annual capital works deduction from 2.5 per cent to four per cent.
Treasury openly says the measures are designed to encourage more institutional investment in rental housing.
Labor’s much larger 2026 overhaul of property taxation has also aimed to give build-to-rent another advantage.
The government is now restricting negative gearing for newly purchased existing homes while retaining it for new housing supply and specified government priorities — and build-to-rent developments are explicitly exempt.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers told parliament that investors supporting government housing priorities would remain exempt, including build-to-rent and social and affordable housing.
Housing Minister Clare O’Neil has similarly pointed to build-to-rent tax incentives as part of the government’s strategy to increase long-term rental supply.
The new landlords?
Major fund Aware Super currently manages about $235 billion, with a proposed merger tipped to push the combined fund to around $254 billion.
Through its partnership with global investment manager Barings, it operates the WeAreLiving build-to-rent platform. It is a pipeline that now covers more than 2000 homes across NSW, Queensland, Victoria and the ACT.
Its recently opened Fortitude Valley project in Brisbane contains 366 apartments. About 40 per cent of those are available at discounted rents supported by a Queensland government subsidy.
Aware also has a 135-apartment development at Zetland in Sydney and a 433-apartment project at Albert Park in Melbourne, among others.
Aware asserts that housing can provide the fund with long-term, inflation-linked income while simultaneously adding new homes.
Aware has been contacted for comment.
And it’s hardly alone. HESTA, which manages more than $105 billion for more than one million members, is also deep into housing across Australia.
Its Swift Walk development in Melbourne contains 362 rental homes, including 272 social and affordable homes, developed through a partnership involving Assemble and Housing Choices Australia with federal housing funding support.
HESTA says the broader Assemble strategy aims to deliver 17,000 homes by 2034.
HESTA has been contacted for comment.
Then you have AustralianSuper, Australia’s largest super fund controlling more than $430 billion on behalf of 3.6 million members.
It committed almost $500 million to Assemble’s build-to-rent-to-own projects, with an initial expectation of delivering more than 1400 homes.
The model allows residents to rent while locking in a purchase pathway, meaning the institutional investor does not necessarily remain the permanent landlord.
AustralianSuper and HESTA also took majority ownership of Assemble, with the explicit goal of unlocking institutional capital for housing at scale.
AustralianSuper has been contacted for comment.
BDO Australia’s latest build-to-rent survey found the national pipeline had surged from 39,300 apartments to 51,000 in just one year, an increase of about 30 per cent.
The projects are worth an estimated $40.1 billion.
Victoria has almost 25,000 apartments in the pipeline, NSW more than 17,000 and Queensland more than 6300.
BDO believes build-to-rent could potentially reach 350,000 apartments within a decade if policy and investment settings continue to support expansion.
But there’s still a way to go before Panos’ prediction of a super-backed housing monopoly becomes a reality.
BDO estimates build-to-rent currently represents just 1.15 per cent of Australia’s rental housing stock and 0.31 per cent of all housing, meaning the majority of owners are still “mums and dads”.
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