Triguboff says the likes of Lendlease, Mirvac and Stockland support build-to-rent to drum up capital

Harry Triguboff, one of the country's biggest owners of rental apartments, has accused unspecified rival developers, but the likes of Lendlease, Mirvac and Stockland, of supporting build-to-rent housing because they were trying to drum up capital at a time of harder access to funds.

Triguboff owns a portfolio of more than 4000 apartments that he rents out.

He suggested the current build-to-rent drive was pushed by his rivals.

"They want… a tax break," Meriton boss Mr Triguboff told The Australian Financial Review, though not naming them directly in the article.

"But the interesting thing is, it's not the people with the money talking.

"It's the snorers that have no money to build."

Housing built for long-term rent to middle-income households has yet to become established in Australia because tax concessions for investment in residential housing are not available to institutions in the way they are to mum-and-dad investors and low yields on residential property do not make it viable.

Last year, Treasurer Scott Morrison ruled out the use of managed investment trusts, a vehicle that pays a low 15 per cent withholding tax, for at-market residential property, saying they had to be limited to the purpose of affordable, or key-worker, housing.

The shadow treasurer Chris Bowen last month signalled he would reconsider the issue.

But Mr Triguboff, who subsidises his own rental portfolio with profit from his development projects in Sydney, Brisbane and Gold Coast, questioned whether foreign institutions were interested in Australian build-to-rent as an asset class.

"I'm critical of people talking about it without naming who are the people that will invest," he said in an interview with the Financial Review.

"I don't think they have people that will invest. I think what they are trying to do is sell the idea to Morrison, then they will run around and get somebody. That's how it appears."