Baby Boomers, Married with Children - Saturday, September 26, 2009 22:29 - 0 Comments

Units No Longer Housing’s Poor Cousin

RP Data Property Pulse Professional Edition 25 Sep 2009:

According to the ABS, Australia’s population growth has hit the record books (again) with a net increase of 439,000 new residents over the year to March 2009.
To provide some perspective, in raw numbers Australia’s population growth has never been this high.
In percentage terms, population growth hasn’t been this high since the baby boom.
Population growth is fundamental to the property market as it constitutes demand for housing.

The higher the population growth, the more homes need to be built. Unfortunately, there is a major divergence between housing demand and housing supply; there is simply far too few new dwellings being constructed to provide homes for our growing population.
This issue will be explored in detail in our Property Pulse next week.

Rental Markets

Rental markets around the nation have shown large increases in rental rates over the last three years; however, over the last quarter rental rates have peaked and in some cases fallen.
Rental demand has temporarily eased as many renters took advantage of the improvement in housing affordability brought about by low interest rates and the boost to the First Home Buyers Grant.

With vacancy rates remaining at historic lows across the capital cities, any reprieve for renters is likely to be short-lived.

Rental rates will most likely start to increase again due to a shortage of rental housing and a pull back of first home buyer demand coupled with record levels of population growth. Continue…