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.
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Archive
Shade: bringing planners and health professionals together to provide critical infrastructure
Susan Thompson, Liz King, Jan Fallding and Nicola Groskops. City Futures (No paywall)Increasingly communities are rightly demanding a built environment that makes it easy for everyone to be healthy and well as they go about their daily activities. This is related to growing understandings about the critical health supportive role of the places where we live, work, play, and how we travel from one to the other. COVID-19 has sharpened our collective focus on this issue, particularly the importance of local neighbourhood public spaces, walking paths, cycleways and green parkland for good health and wellbeing.
https://blogs.unsw.edu.au/cityfutures/blog/2021/10/shade-bringin…
# NSW, Coronavirus COVID-19, Health, Housing market, Planning and development.London council to allow homeowners to return to regenerated estates as shared owners
Nathaniel Barker The Guardian (Paywall)A London council has approved a policy to allow homeowners to return to regenerated estates as shared owners.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/london-council-to-allo…
# International, Public and community housing, Estate renewal, Home ownership.Elon Musk announces Tesla headquaters move from California to Texas
ABC (No paywall)Tesla chief executive Elon Musk says he is moving his company headquarters from California to Texas, citing housing prices as a major issue for his employees. ... Musk said the cost of housing in the San Francisco Bay Area made it tough for many people to become homeowners, translating into long commutes.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-08/elon-musk-moves-tesla-hea…
# International, Housing affordability, Housing market.Don’t get over-exuberant: RBA issues warning on property prices
Shane Wright and Jennifer Duke The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)The nationwide surge in house prices and expectations of even higher prices could lead to “over-exuberance” in the property market, the Reserve Bank has warned while signalling more restrictions on lending are on the way. ... The RBA report suggests there are other options for APRA to take, including restrictions on debt-servicing costs relative to a household’s income, loan-to-income restrictions and tougher loan-to-valuation standards.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/don-t-get-over-exuberant…
# Australia, Housing market.Housing stock gains $1 trillion in value even as businesses shed staff
Shane Wright The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Australia’s residential housing stock has gained $1 trillion in value in just five months, even as the number of people in work falls back to pre-coronavirus levels with lockdowns in NSW and Victoria dragging down the national jobs market.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/housing-stock-gains-1-tr…
# Australia, Housing market.‘Gold Coast of the west’: Scarborough residents fighting high rises on five fronts
Hamish Hastie The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Despite the efforts of anti-high rise groups, Scarborough could become the Gold Coast of the west by the middle of the decade with six towers above 18-storeys either approved or earmarked for the famous stretch of Perth coastline. The developments include a tri-tower proposal that would feature 16, 22 and 46-storey towers; a 24-storey apartment block; a dual 12 and 29-storey complex and a dual 17 and 19-storey development.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/western-australia/gold-coast-of-…
# Australia, Housing market, Planning and development.Lenders battle for market share amid record refinancings
John Collett The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)While lockdowns in our two biggest cities saw the value of new home lending decline in August, the total amount of refinancings to new lenders surged 3.1 per cent. ... The biggest factors driving the refinancings are the two cuts in official interest rates by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) last year, the second of which, in November, took the cash rate to a record low of 0.1 per cent.
https://www.smh.com.au/money/borrowing/lenders-battle-for-market…
# Australia, Housing market.Pandora Papers reveal big foreign money secretly behind some prime Australian real estate
Echo Hui, Patrick Begley and Elise Worthington ABC (No paywall)Australian properties — including Tasmanian dairy farms, Sydney CBD apartments and even a Hilton Hotel — have been secretly purchased by wealthy, sometimes controversial foreign figures, an ABC investigation has discovered. The money came from a corrupt Chinese steel magnate, a political power couple in Sri Lanka and a former oil executive via opaque corporate structures. Each purchase involved multiple layers of offshore trusts and shell companies, making ownership almost impossible to track. Unlike other countries, Australia lacks a register to show who ultimately owns property. Watch on YouTube. (Four Corners)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-05/pandora-papers-four-corne…
# Research alert, Video Australia, Housing market, International, Landlords and agents.