Food, water and shelter. The floods have reinforced the importance of life’s essentials  and highlighted the fundamental difference between an investment in a home compared  to other investments like shares. 

If disaster strikes your share portfolio, you lose your money, but when disaster strikes  your home, you lose the roof over your head.

As a consequence of the floods, both sales agents and property managers across the  state are having new conversations with their customers that they’ve never had before. 

For instance, some renters have found themselves in uninhabitable properties and in  some cases, with nowhere else to go, they don’t want to leave. It introduces new  challenges for property managers in speaking to their customers about the rights and  responsibilities of tenants and landlords in these unique circumstances.

There are other new challenges to be faced, including instances where a purchaser has  exchanged contracts to buy a home a month ago, only for that home to be destroyed.
 
In these cases, buyers may be wondering if they can get out of the contract. Others  who have exchanged on properties in flood prone areas, even it that property is largely  unaffected, may start wondering the same.

All these questions are understandable. The stress caused by the future of your home  being uncertain is immense. In most cases, it’s a case-by-case prospect and the  outcome will be guided by the details in the contract.

But the people skills of everyone working in the real estate industry are coming to the  fore at this challenging and worrying time.

We should also be mindful of the impacts for small businesses, many of whom have lost all revenue, and yet which will be expected to do their best to continue to serve their communities.

For impacted businesses, REINSW has built a toolkit with access to all the specific information, resources and support available to help them cope.

The Federal Budget is only a fortnight away and in addition to Defence spending, we  can expect money to be committed to natural disaster planning and recovery efforts. 

Let’s hope it hits the mark in terms of being effective and helpful for the many  thousands affected. Measures to enhance affordability should be part of a coordinated  response, though these measures must not increase pressure on the demand side of the  equation when it’s the supply side that’s under most duress.

Last week the NSW Premier announced a plan for a stamp duty exemption to encourage  people to move out of floodplain areas. But the question of where they will go remains  unanswered.

On one hand, with this proposal the Government is acknowledging the huge barrier to  moving that stamp duty is, yet on the other, it continues to pocket over a billion dollars  each month from this tax. 

All the while the supply of homes, including in key regional markets, remains critically  low. With so many people displaced due to the devastation of the floods, this is a reality  that is about to become even more starkly obvious.