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
Local Area Analyses
NSW Land and Housing Corporation (No paywall)The NSW Land and Housing Corporation (LAHC) is developing new tools to support its long-term view across our property portfolio. These tools help provide a framework and direction to deliver the LAHC Portfolio Strategy. Our purpose is to ensure we have a housing portfolio that reflects the needs of people across NSW. Place-based strategies, such as the Local Area Analyses and Regional Area Analyses, help us better understand what stock we have, where it is located, its condition, and what opportunities are available for redevelopment, sale or long-term retention. This analysis considers the current state of the portfolio, where opportunities lie, and the changing needs of our community over the next 20 years. Taking a long-term view of local government areas across the State, we are able to make better decisions on how best to manage not only our portfolio but support the communities that live in them.
https://www.dpie.nsw.gov.au/land-and-housing-corporation/plans-a…
# NSW, Public and community housing, Planning and development.Sydney house prices still 20% above pre-pandemic levels despite rising interest rates
Cait Kelly The Guardian (No paywall)House prices in Sydney remain more than 20% above pre-Covid levels despite rising interest rates, as economists warn housing affordability has “never been worse”. ... [Digital Finance Analytics’s Martin North said] “There is almost no possibility of home prices performing again as they have over the last 18 months. At very best they might wobble a bit and go sideways, but the most likely scenario is a fall of between 15-20% over two years. Obviously, it varies by location and property but 15-20% is feasible.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/17/sydney-ho…
# Australia, Housing affordability, Housing market.Small apartment buildings should be exempt from planning NIMBYism
Michael Smith The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)When your kids grow up, where are they going to live? Being a new dad myself, it is a question that seems particularly uncertain. If you have teenagers, it’s probably only a matter of time until your kids will want their own space. But if they choose to stay in Melbourne where exactly would they be able to afford? With Australia’s ongoing housing crisis, the answer is likely one of three possibilities: the outer suburban fringe, a small city apartment or living with you indefinitely. Virtually everything else has become too expensive for young singles and families to afford.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/small-apartment-buildin…
# Australia, Housing affordability, Planning and development.How a young couple turned a ‘crap’ old caravan into a luxury family home
Nell Card The Guardian (No paywall)In January 2021, Hannah and Dave Bullivant posted a leaflet through every letterbox along the main road in their village. The note asked the residents of Oare in east Kent if they could move their cars on a particular day to make way for a wide load that would be travelling through the village to a field behind their friends’ house. ... Hannah and Dave would buy and renovate a static caravan and live rent-free on their friends’ land, during which time they hope to save for a mortgage deposit. At the end of the two years, the Bullivants would move out and the lodge would become guest accommodation for visiting friends and family. ... “There’s enough separation and space between us, so we don’t ever feel like we’re living on top of each other,” says Hannah. “But we are able to live quite communally – we grow veg and garden together, we eat together a couple of times a week in their house or in the field. The children go to school together, so we share childcare and school lifts. In summer there are lots of kids running around in the field that overlooks the sea and the marsh. It’s idyllic, really.”
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/jun/18/how-a-young…
# International, Land lease communities, Share houses.Poverty can happen to anyone at any time – it’s in my every waking and sleeping thought
Angela Finch The Guardian (No paywall)It started in July 2020. My relationship was over; it was brutal and public. We had no home, no school, no playgroup, and no doctor. We stayed with my parents 200kms away from all our belongings and where our life once was; I do not know what we would do without them. I am now a sole parent to three daughters. I study full-time. I want to be a social worker; but right now, that is on hold. I share mine and my children’s story because it happens in a moment. I tell it because it can happen to anyone, at any time. ... I pay the rent every second week. For the last two months I haven’t been able to pay my rent in full and I know that if I was with a real estate agent, I would have been evicted weeks ago. [Read on]
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/16/poverty-ca…
# Australia, Families, Personal stories, Welfare, Women.I bought a house in my 20s with a friend, and we’re still friends
Monique Farmer Domain (No paywall)Buying a first home can seem like an impossible challenge right now, especially when you’re in your 20s and only just earning a full-time salary. I felt the same when I was that age in the 1990s. Despite having held casual jobs since the age of 15, part-time work while at university and starting a full-time job before my 21st birthday, the task of scraping together a deposit felt unachievable at times. Like many young people then and now, I lived at home after finishing university before briefly renting in an inner-city sharehouse to get that first taste of freedom and independence. But my parents’ view that rent money was dead money was never far from my mind. My friend Pettina was in a similar position – still living with her parents, working full-time, unable to quite afford to buy a house on her own. Each of us had almost enough money to buy a tiny unit near where we grew up in the southern suburbs of Sydney, but the idea of a house was more appealing, if ambitious. Somehow, probably over a few Baileys on ice, we came up with the idea of combining our savings and buying a house together. ... Pettina still lives in our little home, although it’s no longer little ...
https://www.smh.com.au/property/living/i-bought-a-house-in-my-20…
# NSW, Share houses, Home ownership.How to tap your home equity for an income stream
George Cochrane The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Centrelink’s pension loans scheme was renamed the Home Equity Access Scheme (HEAS) at the beginning of the year... It offers a fortnightly income stream of up to 150 per cent of the maximum age pension, with an interest rate of 3.95 per cent – although that may rise.
https://www.smh.com.au/money/borrowing/how-to-tap-your-home-equi…
# Australia, Home ownership, Older people, Welfare.Perth housing blocks now the smallest in the country amid strong demand for new homes
Emma Wynne ABC (No paywall)The average block of land for new homes in Perth is just 399 square metres, the smallest in the country, but the houses are not shrinking as fast.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-18/perth-smaller-blocks-chea…
# Australia, Planning and development.