23 August 2013

Simon brings the love for granny flats

| johnboy
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Simon Corbell has announced he’s making it easier to build “secondary residences”:

A new regulation has been made to cut costs and red tape for owners who wish to build a ‘secondary residence’ on their block, the Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development, Simon Corbell announced today.

The new use of ‘secondary residence’ came into effect with Territory Plan Variation 306 on 5 July 2013. The Territory Plan now permits a second residence up to 75 square metres in size to be built in addition to an existing housing if the block is at least 500 square metres.

“This new use responds to the ACT Government’s commitment to increasing housing choice and is an affordable housing initiative,” Mr Corbell said.

“While there is no opportunity to subdivide or unit title a second residency, there are no restrictions on who can live in it.”

“In some cases, where the lease restricts development to a single dwelling, adding another residence to the block requires a lease variation, which attracts a fee.”

But this new regulation removes the requirement to submit a valuation report with the lease variation application, and removes the fee.

“This initiative can potentially save thousands of dollars for households looking to add a second residence to their block. It will also reduce the time it takes to vary a lease.”

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devils_advocate said :

caf said :

They also need to look at Land Tax on such arrangments – at the moment if you rent out a granny flat you’re liable for Land Tax at the same rate as if you were renting out the entire block, which in many cases would be close to or exceed the rental income you’d recieve from the granny flat.

Not true. when I did a dual occy I just nominated the percentage of the land that was attributable to the rental property and they caculated my land tax based on that percentage of AUV. They didn’t even question the percentage (I nominated 50% which was roughly representative of the land use, so probably no benefit to them).

Well, perhaps that should be made clearer then – because the “Land Tax in the ACT” information pamphlet certainly doesn’t say that. It just says that it’s either based on the AUV of the property, or the AUV multiplied by the Unit Entitlement fraction for Unit Plans (did your dual occupancy have a registered unit plan? That doesn’t apply to granny flats or just having a boarder).

devils_advocate4:23 pm 23 Aug 13

caf said :

They also need to look at Land Tax on such arrangments – at the moment if you rent out a granny flat you’re liable for Land Tax at the same rate as if you were renting out the entire block, which in many cases would be close to or exceed the rental income you’d recieve from the granny flat.

Not true. when I did a dual occy I just nominated the percentage of the land that was attributable to the rental property and they caculated my land tax based on that percentage of AUV. They didn’t even question the percentage (I nominated 50% which was roughly representative of the land use, so probably no benefit to them).

They also need to look at Land Tax on such arrangments – at the moment if you rent out a granny flat you’re liable for Land Tax at the same rate as if you were renting out the entire block, which in many cases would be close to or exceed the rental income you’d recieve from the granny flat.

As someone who rents a granny flat, for a lot less than an equivalent sized unit in a block of them, I see this as a welcomed bit of regulation adjustment.

It means some affordable accommodation away from the troubled public housing locations.

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