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
More than a quarter of Sydney suburbs have a median house price of $2m
Kate Burke Domain (No paywall)Median house prices have topped the $2 million mark in more than a quarter of Sydney suburbs, with areas such as Eastwood, Matraville and Caringbah South among the latest to join the club.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/more-than-a-quarter-of-sydn…
# NSW, Housing market.Growing mismatch between where Sydney’s skilled workers live and work
Anna Patty The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)The number of Western Sydney residents with professional skills, including IT, finance, science and public administration, has spiked by up to 34 per cent in five years, but tens of thousands still face long commutes to jobs outside the area. ... However, the lack of employment opportunities in the region has forced more than 34,000 to commute to jobs outside the area each day, fuelling calls for more businesses to be based in the Parramatta area.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/workplace/growing-mismatch-betwe…
# NSW, Families, Work, employment.The Sydney suburbs foreign buyers searched most during the pandemic
Tawar Razaghi and Melissa Heagney Domain (No paywall)Blue-chip Sydney suburbs near schools, the city or surf were the most sought-after locations for foreign buyers during the coronavirus pandemic. Sydney topped the list of overseas searches, while other popular suburbs included Mosman, Middle Harbour and Chatswood, based on Domain listing data from January 2021 to February 2022.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/the-sydney-suburbs-foreign-…
# NSW, Coronavirus COVID-19, Housing market.How home buyers are spotting a motivated vendor
Melissa Heagney and Tawar Razaghi Domain (No paywall)Some homeowners have become more motivated to sell their properties, with record volumes of auctions going ahead in recent weeks as sellers try to ink deals before interest rates rise, the federal election goes ahead or home price growth softens.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/how-home-buyers-can-spot-a-…
# Australia, Housing market.Why property investors should never fall in love
Sue Williams Domain (No paywall)How do you spot a bad investment? There are the obvious rules, like avoiding the best house in the worst street and plunging all your cash into a property on the most exposed part of a flood plain. But the very worst decision you can make? “Buying the house you’ve fallen in love with,” says investment strategist Rasti Vaibhav.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/why-property-investors-shou…
# Australia, Housing market, Landlords and agents.Beyond eviction: alternative approaches to respond to NSW renting households in crisis
Riley Brooke Tenants' Union of NSW (Paywall)The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the financial stability of a large number of NSW renters, all at once, threatening a wave of potential evictions. In response, the NSW Government introduced a range of protections and supports for renting households, including at various times freezes on evictions and frameworks for rent reductions. While these protections were in many ways inadequate, the fact that there was broad community support for government intervention to sustain tenancies tells us several things. [Read on]
https://www.tenants.org.au/blog/beyond-eviction-alternative-appr…
# Must read NSW, Eviction, Rent, Campaigns and law reform, Coronavirus COVID-19, Landlords and agents, State Government.Window to save ourselves from climate change 'rapidly closing', IPCC warns
Michael Slezak ABC (No paywall)The world’s climate scientists and governments have declared climate change is now a threat to human wellbeing and warned we are about to miss the window to “secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”. The finding comes in the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the impacts of climate change and how we can adapt to them. The new report found the scale of the impacts from climate change threatened to overwhelm Australia's — and the world's — ability to adapt in the coming decades, with some impacts requiring rapid and radical transformations in how we live and operate, combined with immediate and sharp cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. ... Regardless of our actions now, the report says regional and urban areas will face irreversible changes that will impact millions of people's lives, including sea level rises that will destroy and displace homes and infrastructure ... The report found if the sea level rose by 1.1m — which could happen early in the next century — up to a quarter of a million residential buildings would be exposed to inundation as well as thousands more commercial and industrial buildings. [Read on] Read Nick O'Malley's article entitled: '"Atlas of human suffering": More drought, fire and flood, less snow and coral, UN report says' in 'The Sydney Morning Herald' at: [https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/more-drought-fire-and-flood-less-snow-and-coral-un-report-says-20220228-p5a0cw.html] Read Adam Morton's article entitled: 'Climate scientists warn global heating means Australia facing more catastrophic storms and floods' in 'The Guardian' at: [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/28/climate-scientists-warn-global-heating-means-australia-facing-more-catastrophic-storms-and-floods]. Also, read Alice Bell's opinion piece entitled: 'The IPCC climate report is grim – but there is still room for hope' in 'The Guardian' at: [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/28/ipcc-climate-report-grim-hope].
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-28/ipcc-adaption-report-aust…
# Must read Australia, Climate change, Federal Government, Housing market.Single mother evicted from rental after three weeks
Abbey Halter (No paywall)“It was brutal. It was looking close to homelessness and if it wasn’t for my family and friends helping me out financially … I don’t know what would have happened.” March 2020 will go down in history as an uncertain and frightening time for most of us, but for this Canberra single mother teetering on the verge of homelessness, it was so stressful she “could barely see”. (Canberra Weekly)
https://canberraweekly.com.au/single-mother-evicted-from-rental-…
# Australia, Eviction, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19, Personal stories.