Housing crisis: The people fighting the good fight 

SAM Almaliki is a straight-talker when it comes to the nation’s housing crisis. 

“While some progress is being made to make housing more accessible and affordable, it’s not occurring fast enough. We need a national housing authority that binds all levels of government, the private sector, unions and civic society,” Almaliki, the high-profile co-founder of national conveyancing firm Settle Easy, tells the Australian Conveyancer. 

Almaliki’s views demand attention not just because he’s a rising industry star. 

His first-hand experience of housing insecurity gives him credibility on this topic. 

He spent several years in public housing after arriving in Sydney from Iraq as a child with his refugee family in 1997. In his mid-30s, he is also a renter himself. “The federal government is right to focus on the supply issues underlying the housing crisis,” Almaliki says. 

“The delivery of housing in Australia needs to be done at greater scale and speed. We need to significantly reduce red tape, regulatory barriers and overall construction cost.” 

His comments come as the federal government battles to come to grips with a shortfall of affordable housing across the country, especially in the nation’s capital cities.

The government’s current approach, signed with states and territories in 2023, aims to see 1.2 million new well-located homes constructed over five years. 

It’s one plank that the government says is a broad strategy on housing that includes spend on social and affordable housing and extra support for renters and homebuyers. 

“It’s only when all the critical players are in absolute lockstep to make housing affordable and accessible that we can expect to see the scale of change needed to solve the housing crisis,” Almaliki says. 

The Melbourne-based CEO, who recently shared a stage with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for the 2025 Curtin Oration, hosted by Labor-backed think tank the John Curtin Research Centre, says stronger action on housing is needed as a priority. 

A big reason, he says, is that those without secure housing, commonly young families and couples, tend to suffer from a feeling of instability the longer they stay renting. 

“I can understand the anxiety that particularly young people and young couples have in a market that is super-hot and not necessarily accessible for many people,” he says 

“Home ownership, like a job, brings dignity, and it’s the roof and the foundation to having a dignified life, and also a well-functioning family life. It’s not everything but it’s integral. 

“When you have affordable and accessible home ownership, you then have thriving individuals and families, and ultimately a better and fairer society.” 

Almaliki’s advice is to take the approach he has adopted to business – don’t give up. 

Settle Easy, launched in March 2020, just before COVID-19 hit Australia, battled through the pandemic to become one of the largest conveyancing firms in the country. 

More than 100 conveyancers and lawyers now work at the rapidly expanding company, which operates nationally except for the Northern Territory. 

According to Almaliki, getting the company to where it is now has “been a lot of hard work”. 

“The reason we’re still here today is because the genius thing we did is to not give up,” he says. “The pandemic, particularly here in Victoria, took its toll on many businesses in the property and conveyancing sectors and saw many shut because they could not continue to operate – there were no auctions, there were no property listings so you couldn’t transact and help people.” 

Against this difficult backdrop, Almaliki says he fell back on a personal credo to never give up. 

“I’m a great believer that, yes, life is largely about chance, yet you can’t leave anything to chance,” he says. “That’s the attitude I have in terms of how I approach work and life in general. 

“You’ve got to put in the hard yards and you never take anything for granted.” 

It’s an attitude that has led to much success for the 36-year-old, who’s a product not only of public housing but also public schools in Sydney’s south that he attended after exiting Villawood Immigration Detention Centre with his parents and siblings. 

“While some progress is being made to make housing more accessible and affordable, it’s not occurring fast enough. We need a national accord on housing that binds all levels of government, the private sector, unions and civic society” 

– Sam Almaliki 

The tough initiation to Australia came after the family fled their home country, ruled in 1990s by dictator Saddam Hussein. Escaping the brutal regime, Almaliki has previously said the family arrived in Australia on fake passports provided by people smugglers. 

In the years since, it’s been a rapid ascent for Almaliki. In addition to co-founding Settle Easy, he has worked as the Head of Commercial at road safety tech company Acusensus (ASX:ACE), where he helped secure more than $120 million in contracts in less than five years. 

The businessman has also held senior roles at the ABC Advisory Council, Cricket Australia and currently chairs Melbourne’s Caulfield Racecourse Reserve Trust.

Almaliki attributes his rise, in part, to growing up with migrant parents. 

“Family influence obviously played a big role but also being acutely aware of the circumstances – a new migrant seeing my parents just work so bloody hard and not complain or compare,” he says. 

“They just got on with it, they toiled away and really have given us the best chance at life. I was always very conscious of that; the sacrifices they made.” 

He says he harboured a desire to be a lawyer ever since seeing a lawyer help refugees in Villawood. The detention centre was also where he picked up English in a matter of months, enabling him to act as an interpreter to the Arabic-speaking detainees. 

By contrast, he describes his entry into conveyancing as a case of right place, right time. 

He says a friend told him about Settle Easy being on the lookout for a co-founder and CEO – an opportunity he viewed as too good to pass up. 

“I said you should go for it, but if you don’t want to take it up I will, and it’ll be a great chance for me to say to my parents I’m finally doing something in the law.” 

Almaliki gained a law degree from Wollongong University last year, 15 years after he enrolled into the course. 

“Today I’m CEO and a major shareholder of a business that’s helping thousands of Australians settle, and I’m the product of public housing and public schools,” he says. 

“That’s really my passion around it to be honest – it’s about helping people get into home ownership and realise their dreams.” 

Settle Easy, which has logged rapid growth in the past 12 months, is now closing in on being in the top 10 conveyancers by number of settlements lodged per year. 

“We have always had a strong emphasis on being hi-tech and high touch and that’s about providing a very personalised professional service that’s enabled by the appropriate technology platform – and that’s really been the core of our proposition,” Almaliki says. 

On the company’s future prospects, he says that the “proof is in the pudding”. 

Settle Easy has “97 per cent customer approval ratings and over 94 per cent approval ratings by brokers and referring agents,” he says. 

“We don’t get it right every time but our amazing team gets it right nine-and-a-half out of 10 times and our job is to continue to make sure we’re inspecting what we expect and delivering on our promise to help Aussies ‘settle easy’.”