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
We’ve done it before, others do it now – a national housing plan is not beyond our wit
Rowan Moore The Guardian (No paywall)From the United Kingdom ... The important question is: what might actually make a difference to the neverendingly intractable problem of housing? A large part of the answer is the one thing that this government has not attempted, because it is ideologically and organisationally inhibited from doing so, which is positive public intervention in the planning and building of homes and communities. ... The powers that created new towns can be used to build homes just where they’re needed.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/15/weve-dont-…
# International, Housing market.Sisters In Law: What are tenant’s rights on the bond and end of lease clean?
Alison Barrett and Jillian Barrett news.com.au (No paywall)A NSW woman, who rented a unit for three years, has been shocked by her landlord’s “miserly” move after she moved out. ... Welcome to Sisters In Law, news.com.au’s weekly column solving all of your legal problems. This week, our resident lawyers and real-life sisters Alison and Jillian Barrett from Maurice Blackburn advise on renter’s rights when it comes to their bond.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/renting/sisters-in-l…
# NSW, Bond.Aboriginal land claim approved for historic Sydney site
Millie Muroi The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)A prominent, historic Sydney site, which used to be a detention centre, will be part-owned by the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council after an Aboriginal land claim was approved on Thursday. Under the agreement, 1.5 hectares of the Yasmar site on Parramatta Road at Haberfield will be transferred to the land council, along with its heritage house, garden and other unoccupied buildings on the site. ... Built in 1856, the site has served as a private home, Sunday school and children’s court, as well as being commandeered for office quarters by the Australian Army during the second world war. It was added to the NSW State Heritage Register in 2000. The site, which is now a juvenile justice facility, has had a claim over it since 2016. ... Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council chief executive Nathan Moran said approval of the Aboriginal land claim was a significant win for Sydney’s Aboriginal community. This is great news and some recompense in recognition of historic dispossession of land,” Moran said.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/aboriginal-land-claim-approv…
# NSW, Heritage listings.‘Not necessarily good news’: Property plunge no panacea for housing affordability crisis
Matthew Elmas The New Daily (No paywall)Hopeful home buyers have been warned that falling property prices won’t improve housing affordability, despite the average time taken to save a deposit blowing out to more than 11 years during COVID.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/property/2022/05/12/housing-a…
# Australia, Housing affordability, Housing market.Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast property prices cool but Corelogic's Tim Lawless says not to worry
Owen Jacques ABC (No paywall)Australia's most expensive real estate market outside of a major city is cooling but experts say it's not necessarily something to worry about. The Sunshine Coast, stretching north to Noosa and south to Caloundra, has the highest median house price of any regional area in the country at about $1 million after prices rose about 50 per cent through the pandemic. The prices even outstrip the Richmond Valley in northern New South Wales, which includes Byron Bay.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-11/real-estate-prices-sunshi…
# Australia, Housing market, Regional NSW.Why falling property prices are actually bad news for first home buyers
John Collett The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Prospective first home buyers’ relief in seeing property prices fall could be short-lived as higher interest rates reduce the amount they can borrow and the gap between what they can afford and house prices widens. ... [Andrew Wilson, chief economist at My Housing Market, says] 'With low rental vacancy rates, investors are in a position pass on their higher borrowing costs to tenants with higher rents.'
https://www.smh.com.au/money/borrowing/why-falling-property-pric…
# Australia, Affordable housing, Housing market.‘We don’t want to be stuck to 300,000 homes a year target’
Lucie Heath Inside Housing (Paywall)From the United Kingdom ... Michael Gove cast doubt on the government’s manifesto promise to build 300,000 homes per year by the middle of this decade. The housing secretary admitted that the government was unlikely to build 300,000 homes this year, adding that ministers are doing everything they can “in order to ensure more of the right homes are built in the right way in the right places".
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/gove-we-dont-want-to-b…
# International, Housing market.St Vincent’s Hospital hopes for healthy return from deceased estate
Lucy Macken Domain (No paywall)The operator of St Vincent’s Hospital is hoping to cash in on the tail end of the Sydney housing boom by listing a row of five Victorian terraces in Darlinghurst for about $11 million. “The major factor for us in selling these properties is, simply, it’s time,” said a spokesperson from St Vincent’s Health Australia, the country’s largest not-for-profit healthcare and aged-care organisation.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/st-vincent-s-hospital-hopes…
# NSW, Housing market.