Aussie blasts Albo's tax changes 'to help first-home buyers' after investor beats everyone at auction to snap up rundown unit for $815,000

By PAUL SHAPIRO, SENIOR NEWS REPORTER, AUSTRALIA Published: 00:27, 25 June 2026 | Updated: 00:29, 25 June 2026 A leading housing advocate has blasted Anthony Albanese's promise that his tax reforms will make it easier for first-home buyers to get a foot on the ladder, after an investor beat every other party at auction to buy a rundown apartment for $815,000.  The one-bedroom unit on Thurlow Street in Redfern, Sydney, opened at $740,000 and sold after a flurry of $10,000 bids on Saturday. It's understood eight parties registered to bid and three were active, including a first-home buyer.  The successful bidder was a Mascot-based real estate industry worker who had been looking at the 'potential for capital growth in the area'.  The investor managed to beat first-home buyers despite Albanese claiming reforms to capital gains tax and negative gearing would help young people get a leg up. His changes are due to come into effect on July 1, 2027, but the plans have already caused the property market to cool, with combined auction clearance rates in capital cities falling to 47.4 per cent last Saturday - the lowest since the early stages of the Covid pandemic in 2020. Affordable housing advocate Jordan van den Lamb argued the sale in Redfern was proof Albanese needed to take even more drastic action to stave off investors. 'It's pretty clear the changes aren't stopping investors from buying houses,' he told Daily Mail.  The one-bedroom unit on Thurlow Street in Redfern, Sydney, opened at $740,000 and sold after a flurry of $10,000 bids on Saturday It's understood eight parties registered to bid and three were active, including a first-home buyer  'This is people with wealth buying extra houses they will never live in just to generate some extra income. The working people are really getting shafted.' Mr van den Lamb, better known as housing influencer Purple Pingers, said the changes are a step in the right direction but nowhere near enough to address affordability. 'There's nothing for renters except for allowing landlords to raise rents, everybody is suffering except the wealthy investors,' he said. 'It's pretty clear who is responsible for our housing crisis and it's not the migrants, it's the wealthy, the people who own the expensive spare houses which they are holding over our head as ransom. 'It's those who are raising the costs of us ordinary people, this recent Redfern sale is indicative of the problem but it wouldn't be the first time an investor has outbid a first-home buyer to buy their 20th, 30th, 40th even 60th investment property.'   Belle Property Surry Hills sales agent Ben Rofe said some of the interested first-home buyers were concerned about the cost of renovating the Redfern apartment and that may have affected their bidding. 'It's a low maintenance 1960s block and there's potential to add a lot of value,' Mr Rofe told the Sydney Morning Herald.    'A lot of the first-home buyers overestimated how much it would cost [to renovate].' An investor paid $815,000 for the rundown Redfern apartment Affordable housing advocate Jordan van den Lamb argued the sale in Redfern was proof Albanese needed to take even more drastic action to help first home buyers  Auctioneer Brown-Garrett said it was important for first-home buyers to have a 'strategy for bidding against experienced investors' if they wanted to secure the property.  'I have had investors at auctions, and they have been tenacious, especially for something like this,' she said. In May, the Albanese government proposed tax changes to make it easier for first-home buyers to purchase a property. Under the Albanese government's reforms, negative gearing would apply only to new builds from May 12, with existing arrangements grandfathered. The 50 per cent CGT discount would be replaced with a 30 per cent rate indexed to inflation. New housing would retain access to the current discount. On Tuesday, Albanese confirmed his government had reached a deal with Greens leader Larissa Waters to secure the passage of the proposal.  Under the deal with the Greens, the Federal government will close a loophole where people can buy property through self-managed super funds and access a capital gains tax rate of just 10 per cent. 'These changes don't in any way change the tax arrangements for superannuation, don't impact any existing SMSF borrowing arrangements and provide time to finalise arrangements that are in train,' the Albanese government said in a statement. 'Labor built superannuation and we'll always look to make it stronger and fairer, and agreeing to these changes will reduce the risks to retirement savings while also securing passage of these important reforms to make the tax system fairer.' The comments below have not been moderated. The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. Your details from Facebook will be used to provide you with tailored content, marketing and ads in line with our Privacy Policy.