Housing News Digest
Housing News Digest
The Tenants' Union Housing News Digest compiles our pick of items from all the latest tenancy and housing media, sent once per week, on Thursdays.
Below is the Digest archive from November 2020 onwards. From time to time you will find additional items in the archive that did not make it into the weekly Digest email. Earlier archives are here, where you can also find additional digests by other organisations.
Our main email newsletter, Tenant News is sent once every two months. You can subscribe or update your subscription preferences for any of our email newsletters here.
See notes about the Digest and a list of other contributors here. Many thanks to those contributors for sharing links with us.
We love sharing the news and hope you find it informative! We're very happy to deliver it for free, but if you find it valuable, can you help cover the extra costs incurred by making a donation?
Archive
Locked out: housing has become a path to wealth, but renters have been left behind
Peter Hannam The Guardian (No paywall)Scott Morrison’s comment last month that “the best way to support people renting a house is to help them buy a house” was seized on by some as a “let them eat cake moment”. ... Groups from the Australian Council of Social Service to the Committee for Sydney have led calls to address housing affordability that have produced little substantial policy from the major parties, at least federally. ... As one senior member of the NSW government told me recently, housing has gone from an essential “roof over our heads” to a commodity for wealth accumulation and speculation. Federal and state policies had largely served to steer ever more money into the sector, favouring those already in the market.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/30/locked-ou…
# Australia, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19, Federal Government, Housing affordability, Housing market.The RBA will raise interest rates — but not to the alarming levels the experts are predicting
Ian Verrender ABC (No paywall)Australia now finally is captive to real estate. We aren't the only country to have allowed this to happen. But we are one of the most egregious examples. Our banking system, which for decades has prospered on the back of soaring property prices, has become hostage to a $9 trillion monster. And while our politicians for years berated each other over relatively insignificant levels of government debt, they conveniently ignored Australia's real economic Achilles heel: household debt. That's now hobbled our central bank. It can't raise rates to anywhere near the level it may require without causing utter chaos. Perverse as it may seem, our perilous personal debt situation could be the saving grace for those who recently geared themselves up to the eyeballs. We simply can't afford to have so many go broke!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-02/rba-will-raise-rates-but-…
# Australia, Federal Government, Housing affordability, Housing market.The European Responsible Housing Awards 2022: the finalists for Helsinki announced
(No paywall)For the fourth edition of the ERHIN awards, a joint initiative of Housing Europe, the International Union of Tenants (IUT) and DELPHIS, we received 70 submissions across five categories from 20 countries, and so, deciding on five winners and finalists was a challenging task for the Jury. We are delighted to announce the finalists of this year’s European Responsible Housing Awards.
# International, Public and community housing, Climate change, Housing affordability, Housing market, Human rights, Older people.The Mortgage Stress Problem, Discussed On The Radio
Martin North (No paywall)Nothing new, but I was able to contextualize the mortgage and home price issue. Years of poor policy and regulation. (Digital Finance Analytics)
https://digitalfinanceanalytics.com/blog/the-mortgage-stress-pro…
# Audio Australia, Housing market.Shelter says 227,000 'no fault' evictions in three years is appalling
Charley Adams & James FitzGerald BBC (No paywall)Some 227,000 private renters in England have been served a "no fault" eviction notice in the past three years, a YouGov poll has suggested. Homelessness charity Shelter wants the government to scrap these evictions, saying losing a private tenancy is the second biggest cause of homelessness.
# International, Rent, Homelessness, Housing market, No-grounds evictions, Personal stories.First time buyers prepare for rate rises, parties battle over housing
Shane Wright The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)A quarter of a million home buyers in NSW and another 350,000 in Victoria in some of the country’s key swing electorates will face their first ever interest rate rise if the Reserve Bank, as expected, starts tightening monetary policy this week. As both major parties claimed their policies would help people get into the property market, economists and financial markets expect the sharpest lift in official interest rates since the country emerged from the global financial crisis.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/first-time-buyers-prepar…
# Australia, Federal Government, Housing affordability, Housing market.‘It just doesn’t work’: renting in northern NSW is so impossible we’ve had to go off-grid
Daisy Dumas The Guardian (No paywall)Months before thousands of people were left homeless because of unprecedented flooding, rental prices in New South Wales’s northern rivers were surging, largely driven by a pandemic-induced influx of families and young professionals from Sydney and Melbourne. ['The Guardian' asks: Have you had a bad experience with the rental market? Tell us using the form provided.]
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/may/02/it-just-d…
# NSW, Rent, Homelessness, Housing market, Personal stories, Regional NSW.How has the student population evolved in the past 2 years?
Savills Research (No paywall)From the United Kingdom ... Market surges despite economic uncertainty. ... Domestic and non-EU international acceptances both grew, by 1.4% and 2.4% respectively, while the number of EU acceptances halved. This pattern has been anticipated since the UK’s exit from the EU, and the strength of domestic and other international demand has helped broadly maintain total intake. Traditionally, PBSA [Purpose Built Student Accommodation] has been disproportionately occupied by international students, so the strong growth in that segment should mean solid demand for purpose built accommodation.
https://pdf.euro.savills.co.uk/uk/market-in-minute-reports/mim-s…
# International, Housing market, Students.