Mirvac CEO Susan Lloyd-Hurwit: Tighter credit, not tax, plagues property industry

Tighter credit settings were having a greater effect on the residential property industry than any Labor plan to make negative gearing tax perks available only to investors in new property, Mirvac chief executive Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz said.

Ms Lloyd-Hurwitz, in Perth to kickstart the last component of the $354 million Latitude at Leighton urban renewal project, said she did not think Labor’s negative gearing proposal would have any impact on Mirvac.

“I don’t,” she told WestBusiness.

“The changes that are happening in the market due to financing are far more pertinent to what’s happening than changing (tax) policy settings.

“The best modelling ... has been done by KPMG and the Grattan Institute, which puts the impact at somewhere around 2 per cent impact on prices.

“The important thing is certainty and we ... are very pleased that there is certainty around what the policy is and when it will be implemented.”

She said Labor had spelt out clearly its policies on negative gearing, capital gains tax and tax on withholding income from managed investment trusts. “Now they are known, people will factor those in,” she said.

Ms Lloyd-Hurwitz said “excessive price growth” in apartments in Sydney and Melbourne, was “retracing”.

Perth had been “challenging for some time” but was on “a mild upward trajectory”. Defaults on apartment settlements were at 2 per cent and there was no discernable difference in default levels between east and west, she said.

On women on boards, Ms Lloyd-Hurwitz said she did not buy any argument there was a girls’ club to rival the boys’ club.

Mirvac is one of the few ASX-listed companies with as many women on the board as men.

“We are very committed to diversity ... and inclusion because if you don’t have a place where it’s safe for people to speak, the diversity is worthless,” she said.