Approvals V Construction
Hotspotting
Two very different headlines have summed up the problems for Australia’s ongoing housing shortage. One of the recent media headlines declared that building approvals were at a two-year high and that things were improving for the nation’s housing shortage. The other described why building approvals are almost irrelevant – it said that project deferrals are occurring at a record rate. The reality of the current crisis is this: it doesn’t matter how many houses and apartments are approved for construction – and it doesn’t matter how many re-zonings state governments push through...
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Webinar Replay: Reflections & Projections - A Deep Dive into Real Estate Trends & Forecasts
Hotspotting
In this insightful webinar, Terry Ryder, founder of Hotspotting, and Tim Graham, Hotspotting’s General Manager, analyze the surprises and trends of 2024 in the Australian property market and share their projections for 2025. With decades of combined experience, they provide investors with actionable advice on navigating the coming year. Key Highlights 2024 in Review Defying Predictions: Despite high interest rates and inflationary pressures, property prices rose by an average of 5.53% nationally in 2024. Perth led with an astonishing 18.7% growth, followed by regional Western Australia,...
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Best Buys Result
Hotspotting
You don’t have to be super rich or invest $1 million to make big capital gains in residential real estate: you just need to follow Hotspotting’s signature report, the National Top 10 Best Buys report. Those who followed the tips in our report of a year ago could have made close to $100,000 in capital gains spending as little as $400,000 – or $180,000 in gains after investing $630,000. In December 2023 we published our National Top Best Buys reports for Summer 2023-34. Our top 10 locations for investors to consider covered a wide range of price points, from less than $300,000 and above $1...
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Listings Rise
Hotspotting
The greatest complaint heard most often in real estate across Australia is that there are plenty of buyers, but a shortage of listings. The number of properties for sale has been well short of the levels needed for a balanced market, particularly in the boom cities of Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth. But that is steadily changing. According to SQM Research, total listings of properties for sale nationwide grew 7.6% in November and are now more than 10% higher than a year ago. Perhaps most significantly, there were major rises in November in those three boom cities, with the...
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Media Absurdities
Hotspotting
Things are constantly changing in real estate nationwide but the one factor that never changes is this: we can always rely on news media to distort the facts and deliver a steady flow of misinformation to Australian consumers, all in the interests of attracting readership, with little regard for accuracy, honesty or fairness. The past week or so has been chockful of media nonsense. If you can believe the headlines, the national property boom is over, house prices are plunging, the rental boom is over and the North Queensland city of Townsville is a mining town. One of the constants of my...
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2025 Predictions
Hotspotting
Rumours of the death of ‘the national property boom’ are greatly exaggerated – especially since we didn’t have a national property boom in 2024. Rather, over the past 12 months, we have seen differing market cycles in many locations - as is the usual state of play in real estate throughout Australia. Strong property price growth was recorded in Perth, Adelaide, and Brisbane in 2024, but not in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Darwin or Hobart. Similarly, in the regional areas, there were declining and stagnating markets, as well as some where prices were showing good price...
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Regional Investment Boom
Hotspotting
Victoria’s real estate market is witnessing a significant shift as young first-home buyers increasingly seek affordable housing in regional areas. According to recent data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), first-home buyer loans in Victoria soared to 4,202 in July – the highest number in nearly two years. This surge reflects growing confidence among young buyers and a trend towards exploring housing options beyond Melbourne. Nationally, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and the Regional Australia Institute report that the flow of people from cities...
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Units Beat Houses
Hotspotting
Hotspotting was among the first to identify and highlight the most significant change in the Australian real estate scene – the emerging trend which we document in the quarterly editions of the report titled The Rise and Rise of Apartments., published in association with Nuestar. This trend has turned upside down the dominant paradigm in real estate, that houses out-perform apartments on capital growth. There is now growing evidence that attached dwellings are mounting a strong challenge to houses. It has long been believed that land content was the big thing in driving...
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Why a Buyer’s Agent Is a Game-Changer for Property Investors | Featuring Chris Graham
Hotspotting
Thinking of buying property on your own? 🏡 In this episode of The Property Playbook, host Terry Ryder is joined by Chris Graham, Senior Property Advisor at Australian Hotspot Advocacy, to explore why engaging a buyer’s agent could be the key to securing your next winning investment. What You'll Learn: What a buyer’s agent does and how they work exclusively for the buyer’s interests. The value of off-market properties and how buyer’s agents can provide access. Why having a professional on your team ensures due diligence and avoids costly mistakes. How to identify a trustworthy...
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Melbourne Market Myths
Hotspotting
Melbourne’s property market remains the great under-achiever of the nation but that may be about to change. A number of key indicators suggest better performance by the Melbourne property market is imminent. One pointer to better times is the latest Property Sentiment survey by API magazine, which recorded a major turnaround in investor attitudes towards the Victorian property market. The survey asked: Which state or territory do you regard as having the best property investment prospects for the next 12 months? Mid-year Melbourne and Victoria attracted only 8.6...
info_outlineIt’s been 15 months since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made his big announcement about fixing the housing shortage – but there has been, as yet, no progress in lifting rental vacancies and suppressing rental growth.
The press conference making the announcement that the Federal Government would build 1.2 million new homes in five years was held in August 2023 – but more than a year later it’s clear that little progress has been made and that rental vacancies are not improving.
The latest figures on vacancy rates from SQM Research shows the national vacancy rate at 1.2% In October, unchanged from September and only a fraction higher than a year ago.
Five of the eight state and territory capital cities actually recorded a month-on-month reduction in their vacancy rates, while two others recorded no change.
The only capital city to have an increase in vacancies was Darwin.
Overall, the number of properties available for rental has dropped from almost 38,000 in September to 36,500 in October.
To put that in context, in December 2016 – the last time Australia had a vacancy rate close to 3% - there were 90,000 homes available for rent across the nation.
And Australia has added about three million people to its population since 2016.
Compared with a year ago, when the Federal Government was spruiking its big fix to the shortage of homes, five of the eight capital cities still have vacancy rates at similar or the same levels – and one, Hobart, is significantly lower than 12 months ago.
The highest vacancy rate among the eight capital cities is Canberra at 1.7% - the same as it was a year ago and significantly lower than the benchmark 3% which is considered in the industry to represent a balanced rental market with stable rents.
Now, a year is a long enough time for a government to move the dial on an issue like the rental shortage. Australia could improve this situation almost overnight by implementing measures to encourage and incentivise Australians to become landlords.
The big problem, which has been building now for many years, is that the nation has a chronic shortage of people willing to take on the task of being landlords – buying an investment property and making it available for others to live in.
Government doesn’t perform this role and neither does big business. Over 90% of the homes that people rent in Australia are provided by mum-and-dad investors – but fewer and fewer people are willing to do it, at a time when the costs of doing so are unattractively high and the rules and regulations keep changing to the distinct disadvantage of the owners.
Governments caused this rental shortage and they keep making it worse. So rental vacancies are unlikely to improve in the foreseeable future.
And while that remains the case, there will continue to be upward pressure on rents and an absence of choice for people who need to rent or choose to rent.
Four years ago, the median weekly rent for a house in Australia was around $440 – today it’s over $700.