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.
Our main email newsletter, Tenant News is sent once every two months. You can subscribe or update your subscription preferences for any of our email newsletters here.
See notes about the Digest and a list of other contributors here. Many thanks to those contributors for sharing links with us.
We love sharing the news and hope you find it informative! We're very happy to deliver it for free, but if you find it valuable, can you help cover the extra costs incurred by making a donation?
Archive
Young family leaves the rat race of Canberra property market for tiny house living in NSW
Niki Burnside ABC (No paywall)Laura and Jack Harris were renting in Canberra with their four-year-old daughter when they realised it would be years before they could buy their own home. he Harris family was competing in a rental market higher than any other capital city while facing rising property prices. Keen to save and have some hope of one day owning their own residence, they made a radical decision. "The prices in Canberra are so high that we couldn't save for a deposit," Laura Harris said. "We saw living in a tiny house as a way out." They invested in their small home on wheels, a choice that enabled them to start paying less for a roof over their head. But the change also meant leaving Canberra for a property over the border in Murrumbateman, sharing land with Laura's parents.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-27/family-leaves-canberra-re…
# Australia, Affordable housing, Housing market.Why this year’s Sydney property market is one for the record books
Sue Williams Domain (No paywall)“It’s really been the year when we re-imagined the space in our houses and apartments,” says Domain chief of research and economics Nicola Powell. “We wanted to have areas in our homes where we could work and, spending so much time indoors during lockdowns, we wanted more living space where we weren’t all on top of each other. “That’s really driven a lot of the price growth of houses over that of apartments.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/why-this-year-s-sydney-prop…
# NSW, Coronavirus COVID-19, Housing market.Highest Singapore Rents in Six Years Fuel Expat Housing Woes
Faris Moktar (No paywall)Singapore residents bemoaning expensive home prices now have something else to worry about: rising rents. Rents have jumped to a six-year high, and analysts anticipate further increases as demand outweighs supply. That’s adding to costs for residents of the financial hub, especially expatriates, at a time when inflationary pressures are building. (Bloomberg Wealth)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-27/highest-singa…
# International, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19, Housing market.I moved to the coast for a better life – now I’m back in London where I belong
Laura Barton The Guardian (No paywall)From the United Kingdom ... Last spring, just when everyone else was fleeing the capital, I was returning, hungry for all its glorious chaos. Most days I would walk along the coast road, past the bungalows facing the Channel, where the sea was implacably grey, and the gardens so neatly plotted that the space between each tulip, each daffodil, seemed to have been measured with graticule precision. Each day I would ask myself: “What am I doing here?” I had left London in the summer of 2014. Having flirted with the idea of moving to Los Angeles, instead I chose the Kent coast, then in the early flush of regeneration. I was looking for something that felt more like a community, close enough for creativity to mingle. Somewhere, perhaps, to finally feel settled. But last spring, I returned to London – sneaking back into the city just as everyone else seemed to be heading the other way. [Read on]
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/28/moved-coas…
# International, Coronavirus COVID-19, Home.Will the housing boom be over in 2022? We ask the experts
Rhiana Whitson ABC (No paywall)What will property prices look like next year? It's not great news for first home buyers. Prices are expected to rise again in 2022 before falling in 2023 (although not enough to wipe out the gains of the current boom).
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-30/house-prices-property-boo…
# Australia, Coronavirus COVID-19, Home ownership, Housing market, Landlords and agents.Like songs, the best graphs tell stories. Here are my 10 favourites from 2021
Peter Martin The Conversation (No paywall)... I won’t put a graph into any story unless it is absolutely necessary to tell the story.
When I do, the picture can be worth at least the 800 words that accompany it. So here are my 10 favourites from the business and economy stories I edited for The Conversation in 2021. ... Up until the year 2000, buying a home cost between two and three times household after tax-income. Then, after the headline rate of capital gains tax was halved and investors dived into the market, prices climbed to between three and four times income. Six years ago they jumped again to between four and five times income, and in 2021 they climbed once again to more than six times disposable income. Check out the graph entitled: 'Home prices as proportion of household disposable income' ... and scroll down for more housing graphs.
https://theconversation.com/like-songs-the-best-graphs-tell-stor…
# Australia, Housing market.Is it possible to be content renting long-term? This is what Australia can learn from housing around the world
Annika Burgess ABC (No paywall)Gloria Biberger has been renting the same apartment in Berlin's lively Kreuzberg neighbourhood for 11 years. And despite being a tenant, she says, "it feels like my home". "I know that I could stay here forever," the 37-year-old said. Typically, tenants in Germany have freedom of decoration, with older and cheaper apartments even requiring you to bring your own light fixtures and kitchen sink. "I want to feel very comfortable in my own home," Ms Biberger said. "That's why it's important that I can furnish and decorate it myself; I really want to feel like it's my own thing." ... More than 80 per cent of Berlin's 3.7 million residents rent their home. Across the country, the home ownership rate stands at about 50 per cent, which is one of the lowest in Europe, according to market and consumer data firm Statista. Despite rents increasing more substantially in recent years, Ms Biberger still feels better off renting than if she owned a home. ... Australia's obsession with home ownership has become a pipe dream for many, with skyrocketing rents making it near impossible for long-term renters to save for a home. This year, tenants experienced their biggest annual rent increases since 2009, while house prices have been climbing twice as fast. Housing experts say Australia is falling behind in providing a coordinated policy structure that offers stronger renter protections, long-term stability, and adequate funding for social housing. ... Chris Martin, research fellow at the UNSW City Futures Research Centre, said a starting point was a rethink of renters' rights. Getting rid of no grounds terminations is "the simplest thing that governments could do tomorrow", he said. Australia is one of the few developed countries that allows no grounds evictions. Victoria, Tasmania and the ACT have recently made changes to eviction laws, but across much of the country booming rental prices have led to an increase in tenants being evicted without cause. ... In particular, Mr Martin said states and territories should be looking at rent regulation and rental affordability, which were issues missing from the recent residential tenancies law reviews. "We don't have any regulation of rents for affordability across Australia," he said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-21/rental-market-housing-cri…
# Must read Australia, Rent, Housing market, International, No-grounds evictions.Why won’t governments fix housing affordability?
Kate Burke Domain (No paywall)Rapidly rising property prices have led to increasing concerns around affordability, but support for government intervention may actually decline as affordability worsens, a new paper suggests. ... Authors Ben Ansell, a professor at Nuffield College and the University of Oxford, and Asli Cansunar, an assistant professor at the University of Washington, found consistent evidence that declining affordability, driven by increasing house prices, decreases support for interventionist housing policy, especially among homeowners across Europe, and increased votes for the conservative party in the UK. ... Grattan Institute household finances program director Brendan Coates said the politics of improving housing affordability was fraught because most voters already owned a house or investment and mistrust any change that might dent property prices. ... Independent economist Saul Eslake said supply side reforms were only part of the solution and the federal government needed to back away from policies that inflate housing demand, and had been pursued by both sides of government, such as first-home buyer grants, negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount. It was a tragedy that Labor had walked away from proposed changes to negative gearing and the capital gain tax, he noted, with the opportunity for such reform now possibly gone for a generation. You can access the research paper for a cost at: [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09589287211056171]
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/why-won-t-governments-fix-h…
# Research alert Australia, Rent, Federal Government, Home ownership, Housing affordability, International.