"That means that rents will continue to rise for the foreseeable future, which is good news for landlords but pretty tough if you’re renting,” said UDIA CEO Debra Goostrey.

“Tenants faced with those rising rents would be well advised to compare what they’re likely to be paying in the coming year with the cost of a new home.”

“There are lots of very attractive packages on the market right now and there is every indication that the housing market is bumping along the bottom and poised for recovery.”

“One promising sign of that recovery is that Perth’s home values rose by 0.5 per cent seasonally adjusted in November according to the RP Data-Rismark Home Value Index, this was the highest rise of any capital city.”

“Western Australia has an estimated shortfall of 28,000 dwellings according to the National Housing Supply Council Report and that’s what’s putting pressure on rentals.”

Ms Goostrey said that with its low construction rate, Western Australia was falling behind in the number of homes it needed to house a population that was growing very fast. According to ABS figures Western Australia recorded an increase of 55,838 people in the year to June 2011.

“When the housing market inevitably picks up that housing shortfall will be very apparent.”

In the recently released HIA Economics Update on Housing, the past softening of prices in the market was noted but the industry group now believes there is a reasonable prospect of returning to dwelling price growth at some stage in 2012.

The HIA cites the two recent interest rate cuts and the potential of more to come as a key factor for housing price growth.

"On balance, the HIA Economics Group's view is that there is now a decent prospect of a return to dwelling price growth at some stage in 2012. Barring a complete melt-down in Europe, as interest rates retreat further, prospective investors are increasingly likely to favour housing over term-deposits or shaky equity markets. Meanwhile, as the cost of repayments start to align more closely with rent payments, current tenants are also likely to look at making the leap into home-ownership".

The current favourable movement in interest rates combines with other factors that ensure the Australian housing market is underpinned by strong fundamentals. These include, an overall housing shortage, increased levels of savings by Australian borrowers, as compared to the period prior to the GFC, economic growth fueled by the mining sector and an increase in lending for existing residential properties which is likely to lead to increased buyer activity".

12-Jan-2012 by Staff reporter, WA Business News

The vast majority of the growth is coming from overseas migration, with 30,805 people arriving in WA over the 12 month period.

Natural increase was at 18,870, while interstate migration was 6,163.

Australia’s overall population increased by 1.4 per cent to 22.6 million, with overseas migration counting for 53 per cent of the growth.

Urban Development Institute of Australia CEP Debra Goostrey said with the high growth and low construction rates, WA was falling well behind the required levels of housing.

“While market conditions are weak at the moment for residential housing, the continuing strength of overseas migration demonstrates the underpinning conditions in WA are strong and that will feed into strengthening the sector,” Ms Goostrey said.

“While we have been bumping along the bottom for a while, there is an expectation the market will move into the upward swing cycle in 2012, especially in population growth remains solid.

“With the resource projects that are in the pipeline and the need for skilled migration to increase, there is the potential that we will see population rises similar to the twelve months to June 2009 where we recorded an increase of 67,400.

“That would place an added strain on housing supply.

“With 378,751 people in WA in the 25‐35 age group, there are also a lot of people who are likely to become first home owners over the next few years.”

21-Dec-2011 by Mark Scott WA Business News

The gap between demand and supply increased by 28,200 to 186,800 housing units this year, a National Housing Supply Council (NHSC) report reveals.

The annual report on the state of supply shows NSW and Queensland had the largest shortfalls of 73,700 and 61,900, respectively.

Based on building trends and household growth, the report predicts the gap could grow to more than 640,000 homes in the next 20 years.

NHSC chair Owen Donald says more government financing for housing for low-income earners and financing support, along with changes to planning and development approval, could boost supply and affordability.

"Existing demand-side measures like the first home owners grant and commonwealth rental assistance could also be re-examined with a view to having a more substantial impact on housing supply and affordability," Mr Donald said in a statement.

While there had been some movement on land release arrangements and infrastructure in several states, much more was needed, he said.

Work was also needed on planning and development approval arrangements in most jurisdictions, he said, "with delays, uncertainty and adverse community reaction being major obstacles to increasing supply within existing urban areas".

Master Builders Australia chief executive Wilhelm Harnisch says there's an urgent need for all governments to address the problem through a coordinated policy approach.

Federal government programs to lift supply of affordable housing had been worthwhile but did not address the fundamental constraints driving the problems, Mr Harnisch said in a statement.

"Reducing developer charges and taxes such as stamp duties, speeding up development applications and increasing land supply are the key measures that would make a significant difference in solving both the housing undersupply and affordability problems.

"In the current economic environment, early action to remove the barriers to housing supply would assist in underpinning economic growth and jobs."

Housing Industry Association chief executive Graham Wolfe believes excessive and inefficient taxation and land supply remain high priorities for change.

"Taxation, levies and charges on a new house-and-land package can be in excess of 40 per cent of the purchase price," Mr Wolfe said.

"Independent economic modelling shows that the taxes on a new home are often in excess of the price of the land."

Mr Wolfe said access to land for development was a problem, and all levels of government should tackle the availability and affordability of housing for Australian families.

Newly appointed Housing Minister Robert McClelland said today's report highlighted the need to address the inescapable fact that growth in underlying demand for housing was outstripping supply.

"The report confirms that access to affordable housing is a challenge for many Australians," Mr McClelland said in a statement.

"We need to make sure housing supply matches the needs of our changing populations."

Greens housing spokesman Scott Ludlam later said rent and house prices had spiked compared with wages and inflation, yet there was no national housing supply strategy.

"From 2001 to 2011 full-time average weekly earnings increased by less than 60 per cent while house prices in Perth rose by 195 per cent," Mr Ludlam said in a statement.

"Rents have increased at more than triple the rate of inflation and while house prices have softened marginally this year rents continue to rise dramatically."

Senator Ludlam called on Mr McClelland to tackle the issue head-on.

"We need to see a commitment from the government to providing the programs and the funding needed to fill the huge shortfall in affordable housing availability."

21-Dec-2011 by AAP

“If we continue to build at the average rate of the last 20 years then many areas in the country will face a critical housing shortage by 2020. The cumulative national shortage could approach 500,900 dwellings,” said HIA senior economist Andrew Harvey.

“Housing to 2020 is the most comprehensive report available regarding homes Australia builds compared with what we need to build. The report’s projections highlight just how large the aggregate housing supply challenge facing Australia has become,” said Harvey.

The greatest housing supply challenge is in New South Wales, which could reach a shortage of 155,700 dwellings by 2020 in the absence of policy reforms.

The projected shortages by 2020 under the same scenario in other states and territories are 104,200 dwellings in Victoria; 112,000 in Western Australia; 91,800 in Queensland; 24,600 in South Australia; 12,500 in the Northern Territory; and 1,400 in the ACT. However, Tasmania could reach a projected surplus of 1,300 houses by 2020.

The HIA is Australia’s largest residential building organisation and the report provides projections of the demographic demand for housing and the number of dwellings to be completed over the next nine years in national, state and local government areas.

This article appeared on the Property page, The Edge Financial Daily, September 9, 2011. 

Brisbane lagged other Australian cities with a ranking of 21st, behind cities such as Toronto (4th), Helsinki (7th), Paris (16th) and Tokyo (18th).

"Australia, with a low population density and relatively low crime rates, continues to supply some of the world's most liveable cities," said Jon Copestake, editor for the EIU survey.

Vancouver's score slipped to third after a lower rating for infrastructure, placing it below Vienna in Austria. It's the first time since 2002 that the Canadian city hasn't occupied or shared the top slot for liveability.

It seems residents have to pay for what they get, though, with another recent EIU report ranking Sydney as the sixth-most expensive city in the world, with Melbourne coming at No. 7. The survey assessed the cost of living in both cities to be about 40 per cent higher than in New York, mostly because of steep housing costs in Australia.
Residents of Perth boasted the strongest purchasing power in Australia, aided by the fattest pay packets in the land. Even so, the cost of living in Perth and Brisbane - the 13th and 14th most-expensive locations - came in at about 25 per cent higher than New York.

Not surprisingly, the debt-ridden eurozone countries ranked poorly in the EIU liveability rankings. Greece's capital Athens dropped from 62 to 67th. That ranking put it below Uruguay's capital Montevideo.
Similarly, the sliding liveability across much of the Middle East with its so-called Arab Spring-inspired civil unrest will come as little surprise.

The Libyan capital Tripoli, which has fallen under the control of rebel fighters in recent days, dived to 135th - and presumably would be even lower if the EIU conducted the survey now.

Perhaps more jarring will be the relatively low-rankings given for cities well-known to Australian travellers.
Hong Kong was ranked at 31st, San Francisco came in at 51st, as did Singapore, with both narrowly pipping London at 53rd and New York at 56th.

Elsewhere in the Asian region, the giant Chinese cities of Beijing and Shanghai came in at 72nd and 79th, respectively, while India's commercial hub of Mumbai languished at 116th, just above Jakarta, Indonesia, at 119th.

The worst places to live among the 140 locations surveyed by EIU were Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh's Dhaka and Zimbabwe's Harare.

In a statement accompanying today's release, the EIU said the survey's original brief had been to supply guidelines to human resources departments worldwide as to when to grant hardship allowances as part of expatriate relocation packages.

“It has since evolved as a broad benchmarking tool used by city councils, organisations or corporate entities looking to test locations against one another,” it said in a statement.

Cities are scored on political and social stability, crime rates and access to quality health care. It also measures the diversity and standard of cultural events and the natural environment; education (school and university); and the standard of infrastructure, including public transport.

According to the EIU, every city is assigned a rating of relative comfort for over 30 qualitative and quantitative factors across five broad categories: stability; healthcare; culture and environment; education; and infrastructure. Each factor in a city is rated as acceptable, tolerable, uncomfortable, undesirable or intolerable.

The scores range from 1 to 100, where 1 is considered intolerable and 100 is considered ideal. To provide points of reference, the score is also given for each category relative to New York and an overall position in the ranking of 140 cities is provided.

SMH
31st August 2011
aferguson@fairfaxmedia.com.au with Jason Dowling
 

Property Council of Australia executive director Joe Lenzo said there was a strong commitment to social and major project infrastructure, but the budget was lacking in strategic initiatives to motivate the real estate market.

"Ordinary households and small businesses are not all sharing in the benefits of the resources boom and the best way to address this is to boost the real estate market," Mr Lenzo said.

"The budget also ignored calls for reforms of WA's unfair land tax system, which puts most of the land tax burden on a narrow group of property owners and investors.

This group of property owners are penalised each year with excessive increases in land taxes.

Real Estate Institute of Western Australia president Alan Bourke said despite the budget being pitched as a 'social budget', there was nothing in it to address affordable housing.

"If the government is serious about helping people into more affordable homes, including affordable rental accommodation, then it needs to reduce the burden of stamp duty and the cost of land tax for owners with more than one property," Mr Bourke said.

"By reducing the entry costs of buying property and making land tax bills fairer, owners are more inclined to invest in property which nourishes the rental sector and helps keep median rents down."

Mr Bourke said private owners, which held 80 per cent of Perth's rental accommodation, needed to be encouraged to invest in property rather than be penalised for it.

He said the government should nurture the private sector to supply affordable rental housing.

Finally, Mr Bourke said he was very concerned with projected revenue figures from stamp duty over the next three years.

"The government seems to think that the property market is going to boom over the next few years and that money rolling in from stamp duty will fill up the treasury coffers," he said.

"This seems unlikely, but REIWA puts the government on notice that if stamp duty revenue is to grow at the exponential rate suggested in today's budget then it is absolutely critical that bracket creep is addressed so we don't see a huge blow-out in tax bills for people buying property."

Dan Wilkie
19 May 2011
WA Business News

Click Here to view this article online.

House prices in capital cities dropped 1.7 per cent in the March quarter, new figures show, but there has been a surprising uptick in Perth.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics house price index showed a 2.5 per cent fall in house prices in both Melbourne and Brisbane, followed by a 1.8 per cent drop in Sydney and a one per cent decline in Adelaide.

It was the biggest quarterly fall in prices since the height of the global financial crisis.

But in stark contrast to private sector measures, Perth house prices as measured by the ABS actually lifted by 0.5 per cent.

Despite the improvement, Perth prices are still down 3.2 per cent through the past 12 months, marginally better than Brisbane where prices fell 3.6 per cent.

Nationally, prices in capital cities were down by 0.2 per cent through the year.

The ABS figures follow the latest RP Data-Rismark measure of home prices which showed a 0.2 per cent fall across all capital cities in March that followed a 0.5 per cent drop in February.

Perth prices fell 1.9 per cent through March.

Over the first three months of the year it found prices nationally were down 2.1 percent.

Homeowners should get another reprieve from an interest rate rise tomorrow with the Reserve Bank expected to use its monthly meeting to keep official rates on hold.

That will come despite the TD Securities-Melbourne Institute monthly measure of inflation rose by 0.3 percent in April.

Prices were pushed up by health services, overseas holiday travel and petrol, while there were falls in fruit and vegetables, audio-visual and computers.

The measure of inflation over the full year stands at 3.6 percent, although on the trimmed measure - the preferred measure used by the Reserve Bank - inflation stood at 2.3 percent.

TD's Asia-Pacific head Annette Beacher said the big gulf between the headline and underlying measure of inflation would keep the RBA on hold for now.

"We expect the RBA board tomorrow to again signal that it can comfortably remain on the sidelines for several months to assess the impact of various natural and geopolitical risks buffeting global and local economic activity," she said.

Shane Wright Economics
The West Australian
May 2, 2011
Click Here to see the article online.

This relates to the recently experienced increase in investor and sales activities.

This may be one of the first signs of an upward swing in the Perth residential market. With investment yields increasing and rent becoming a larger slice of the household income, property investment is becoming a more attractive proposition. If we see an easing in the Federal Immigration Policy, to relieve the skills shortage crisis, this will result in increased pressure on the housing market and a decrease in the number of properties for sale in Western Australia.