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
Haymarket Foundation’s healthcare for homeless wins HESTA
Marjorie Lewis-Jones (No paywall)The Haymarket Foundation Medical Practice team has won a 2022 HESTA Impact Award for its dedication to providing accessible, specialist healthcare and housing support services for people experiencing, or who are at risk of, homelessness. (The South Sydney Herald)
https://southsydneyherald.com.au/haymarket-foundations-healthcar…
# NSW, Health, Homelessness.Perrottet fails Glebe on town planning
Ian Stephenson (No paywall)In 1974, the National Trust identified Glebe as containing “the largest continuous number of 1860s and ’70s cottages and terraces forming a continuous townscape in Australia” noting that “its scale and character had been little disturbed by modern intrusion”. In the same year, the Whitlam government purchased 700 houses from the Anglican Church and initiated the visionary Glebe Project whereby the houses were restored and renovated for the continued use by tenants on low incomes. In 1984, ownership of the estates was transferred to the NSW government who completed the restoration of the houses and added over 1,000 bedrooms of accommodation through well-designed low-rise infill. ... Almost 50 years of good planning is now being overturned by the NSW Land and Housing Corporation who, ignoring heritage and community, are treating Glebe as a land bank by selling the old houses and forcing, through spot rezonings in heritage conservation areas, to remove nine-metre height limits to allow the construction of eight-storey apartment buildings on the 1980s infill sites. (The South Sydney Herald)
https://southsydneyherald.com.au/perrottet-fails-glebe-on-town-p…
# History NSW, Public and community housing, Housing market, Planning and development, State Government.Median home price could fall below $1m in Sydney and about $700,000 in Melbourne next year
Tory Shepherd The Guardian (No paywall)Median home prices in Sydney could drop below $1m by the end of next year, new modelling suggests. In Melbourne, the median price could drop to about $700,000. Finance website RateCity has used the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s housing market forecasts – which show increasing interest rates and falling house prices – and applied them to units and apartments as well. In Sydney, the median house price at 28 February was $1,410,128. The forecasts show that would drop by almost $200,000 to $1,213,686 by the end of 2023 with a drop of 3% this year and 9% next year.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/mar/02/median-ho…
# Australia, Housing market.The annual misery of flat hunting for students in Wellington
Ethan Te Ora (No paywall)From New Zealand ... It’s a student rite of passage: first year in the halls, second year flatting. Except finding a flat has never been more expensive, or more desperate than now. And nowhere is less accommodating than Wellington. The capital’s students can spend months looking – with no success. Ethan Te Ora followed five students, over three months, as they did everything they could to find a flat.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/pou-tiaki/127643146/the-annual-misery-of…
# International, Rent, Housing market, Students.Underquoting complaints treble amid calls for tougher penalties
Kate Burke Domain (No paywall)NSW Fair Trading has imposed restrictions on serial underquoters after complaints about the unlawful practice tripled last year, but industry experts say more needs to be done.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/underquoting-complaints-tre…
# NSW, Housing market, Landlords and agents, State Government.Sydney and Melbourne house prices did not grow in February: CoreLogic
Jennifer Duke and Shane Wright Domain (No paywall)The nation’s biggest cities are in the middle of the most dramatic slowdown in the country with Sydney and Melbourne both recording no house price growth in February as mortgage rates start to rise.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/sydney-and-melbourne-house-…
# Australia, Housing market.Housing markets in Melbourne and Sydney slow ahead of RBA rate rises
Shane Wright The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)The Omicron outbreak has failed to dent the economy but the nation’s two largest property markets are showing clear signs of stalling even before the Reserve Bank starts lifting official interest rates to curb growing inflation pressures. ... While the overall economy bounces back strongly from last year’s COVID-19 hit, house prices – which have been growing at their fastest pace in more than 30 years – are now levelling. CoreLogic’s monthly house value report, to be released on Tuesday, will confirm the end of runaway prices in the Sydney and Melbourne markets.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/housing-markets-in-melbo…
# Australia, Coronavirus COVID-19, Housing market.Is it too late to make a sea change or a tree change?
Tawar Razaghi The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Regional property values increased at more than triple the rate of capital cities in the last quarter, new figures show, but agents said the tree- and sea-change trend is unlikely to continue at the same booming pace.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/is-it-too-late-to-make-a-se…
# Australia, Housing market, Regional NSW.