Harry Triguboff, Australia’s richest man and largest private apartment developer, says he expects housing prices to rise now the federal election is over, and has called on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to bring in more immigrants.
Mr Triguboff, 92, has a net worth of $31.48 billion, eclipsed only by Gina Rinehart’s $46.34 billion on the Rich List, and was the Liberal Party’s largest donor in the last financial year via $590,000 his company Meriton Properties gave to federal and state branches in NSW and Victoria.
But despite the Liberals’ crushing defeat he said he thought the housing policies of both major parties were reasonable, although he was surprised by the size of Labor’s win.
“I could never believe there would be such a big difference (in the outcome),” Mr Triguboff told The Australian.
“I hope that Mr Albanese will agree with us that we need more and more houses and more and more people. Because the country is very big and very rich in raw materials, which the whole world wants.
“It is very helpful that the election is now over because the buyers want to know the future. So, we expect the market to improve because of that.”
The multi-billionaire added that he believed Trump’s tariffs would result in more Asian buyers coming to Australia, and said “I wish that Mr Albanese takes as much interest as he possibly can in housing” as a result.
Mr Triguboff, who was born in China to Russian Jewish parents, has donated to both sides of politics and regularly called for higher immigration levels, particularly from his country of birth.
On April 28 in a sponsored article published by Meriton on its X account, he said the housing crisis had “little to do with immigration”, and that it was a “very good thing” that tens of thousands of family members of Indian and Nepalese students are set to arrive in Australia in coming months.
— Meriton (@MeritonGroup) April 28, 2025
“Whether it is Labor or the Coalition, the government has a lot of work to do in regards to the housing crisis. Reducing immigration numbers is not going to cut it,” he said, and argued for construction industry deregulation instead.
In October last year he said the major parties should “stop attacking foreigners” and fast track development approvals, claiming that the solution to the housing crisis was more immigrants and more homes.
And five months before that Mr Triguboff complained that Australia needed more migrants “from everywhere” since he was seeing fewer Chinese buyers for his apartments.
Meriton has built almost 80,000 apartments on Australia’s east coast, including 5,000 in Sydney that it owns and operates as rental properties. It also leases privately owned apartments in Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast through Meriton Property Management.
The rental income has allowed Mr Triguboff to offset lower sales during economic downturns, and in 2024 he revealed he was only putting one-third of his new apartments on the open market due to the lack of Chinese purchasers.
Header image: Harry Triguboff, left (Meriton Apartments Photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons) a Meriton apartment building in Southport, Queensland, right (Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
