Tuesday, May 07, 2024

1

Australia’s Housing Crisis Has Become A Fierce Political Battle

2

We Need A Different Conversation About Australia’s Housing Supply

3

Australian Housing Crisis: Full-Time Workers Forced Into Homelessness

4

Shock Sum Parents Need To Give Their Kids To Buy First Home

5

27 Million Milestone Stirs ‘Population Panic’

6

The Future Of Housing In Australia Is Apartments. Lots And Lots Of Apartments

Trending
Australia’s Housing Crisis Has Become A Fierce Political Battle
Re-imagining Affordable & Sustainable Housing in Geelong
Anembo Affordable Homes showcases the house you can build in three hours
Generation Share: why more older Australians are living in share houses
Churches of Christ DigiAsk project changes the landscape of service provision for the homelessness
Geelong’s rapid growth could spell housing affordability woes, say experts
ACT Greens urge Labor to release housing strategy
How can we prevent financial abuse of the elderly?
Acclaim for Haven; Home, Safe program Sidney Myer Haven
Heritage Listing Wrecks Affordable Housing Plan

Category: In The Media

Home » In The Media » Page 4

Boomers, Generation X or Millennials: Who has it worse when it comes to buying a home and paying it off?

When single mum Kerrie Boylett wanted to buy a home in 1995, almost all lenders turned her away.

Ms Boylett is now retired and aged 68, but back then she was 40, and had a nine-year-old daughter.

“It was a lot harder for me to get a loan as a single person and a woman — it was practically impossible,” she tells ABC News.

Ms Boylett eventually convinced one lender to give her a loan. She bought her first home in Coogee, NSW for $150,000, with a deposit of 15 per cent (which she says was based on a decade of her saving).

Her variable interest rate was a massive 19 per cent and her income was low, making it a daily struggle to afford to live.

“It was really hard, really hard — I mean, I remember once I had the electricity cut off for three days,” she recalls.

Read the full article at abc.net.au

More social and affordable housing is the only solution to Australia’s rental crisis

A boost in social housing benefits everyone – people in housing stress get the homes they need and building new homes creates jobs and opportunities

For the first time, Australia is entering the new year with a prime minister who grew up in social housing.

Yet as Australians face a rise in living costs, soaring rents, and crashing vacancy rates, we are also bidding farewell to a key housing affordability measure.

The National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) was designed to help working people who had been priced out of renting, allowing them to create a stable home for themselves and their family.

The scheme wasn’t perfect – it was based on incentives and payments to landlords – but its end will mean thousands of affordable homes will disappear with no plan for the people who were living in them. Renters leaving the scheme will enter a rental market with record low vacancy rates. Data released this week shows a 10% surge in rent prices across capital cities. Many won’t be eligible for social housing, and those who are will find that waiting lists are years long.

Housing Affordability: Would a Foreign Buyer Ban Make a Difference?

While home values have steadily retreated from their pandemic peak in recent months, they remain at near-record highs, posing an ongoing challenge for many Australians who want to own their own home.

In the September quarter of last year the national average home price sat at $889,800, data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows – 33% higher than in September 2019 ($668,800).

Joey Moloney, a senior associate at the Grattan Institute, says that the affordability of housing in Australia has been deteriorating for years though.

Read the full article at Money Magazine

Australian Property Forecast: What’s In Store For 2023?

The property market took a hit in 2022 as mortgage rates started to increase much faster than initially expected, rising eight times to end the year at 3.1%. To put this into context, the cash rate was sitting at just 0.1% at the beginning of 2022.

“I think what we saw in 2022 was a bit of a roller coaster really in terms of property prices in the property market because we started the year with record prices and then moved into a downturn quite rapidly,” chief of research and economics at Domain, Nicola Powell, told ForbesAdvisor.

Earlier in 2021 the RBA governor, Phillip Lowe, had said that it would not be raising rates until 2024—a comment Lowe has since stepped back from and apologised to borrowers who took out heft loans on the basis of his erroneous advice.

“The RBA kept on insisting that they wouldn’t lift rates until 2024. Now we were skeptical that they could keep to that promise,” SQM Research owner and managing director, Louis Christopher, added.

In 2023 property experts are cautiously optimistic that as interest rates plateau that stability will return to the market. Here’s what we may expect to see…

Read the original article at forbes.com

How housing made rich Australians 50 per cent richer, leaving renters and the young behind

How housing made rich Australians 50 per cent richer, leaving renters and the young behind — and how to fix it

Compared to the rest of the world, income inequality is not particularly high in Australia, nor is it getting much worse — until you include housing.

Rising housing costs have dramatically widened the gap between what Australians on high and low incomes can afford. Rising home prices paired with plummeting rates of home-ownership are driving up wealth inequalities.

If we want to address inequality, we will have to fix housing.

Key points:

  • Housing is draining the incomes of the poor
  • Housing is driving wealth inequality
  • Housing is driving up capital income
  • Housing is creating a “Jane Austen world”
  • The Federal Government needs to fix taxation
  • Australia needs to build more houses

Read the original article at The Conversation

A tsunami of homelessness is about to hit

Rising rents, eight interest rate hikes, surging living costs and natural disasters inflamed what was already among world’s least affordable rental markets Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese has announced.

Belinda has applied for more than 100 rental homes in the past year and been rejected every time.

The 39-year-old Australian single mother of four now lives in a temporary shelter in Campbelltown, southwest of Sydney, and has six months to find a home that costs under 500 Australian dollars a week, or risk ending up sleeping rough.

“I don’t know where I’m supposed to go after that. I have got a house full of furniture that I don’t really want to get rid of. I don’t really want to get rid of my cat or my puppy,” says Belinda. “It is a bit scary to tell you the truth.”

Relentlessly rising rents, eight consecutive interest rate hikes, surging living costs and devastating natural disasters in the past few years have inflamed what was already among the world’s least affordable rental markets.

The eye of the storm: House prices still have a long way to fall

It’s a nail-biting period for homeowners. The rate of decline in house prices eased again in September suggesting a softer landing for the market but if the consensus of economists is to be believed, it’s not over yet.

We could be in the eye of the storm. And if house prices experience a peak to trough fall of between 15 per cent and 20 per cent, as many economists expect, we are less than half way there given the national market is off only circa 6 per cent.

Even if the Reserve Bank of Australia, which places a more conservative 11 per cent estimate on house price devaluation, is closer to the mark, there is still a long way to go before the market cools down. […]

Read the original article at SMH

Uncovering the Hidden Face of Homelessness

A new documentary tells the stories of the fastest growing demographic of homelessness in Australia.

Australians are well aware of the affordable housing crisis their nation is facing, an experience exacerbated by the ongoing impact of the pandemic and current economic climate, but what may come as a shock is the demographic most at risk of homelessness.

A new documentary aims to shed light on this alarming issue and make visible the stories of ageing women facing housing stress. Filmed over two and a half years, “Under Cover” features ten Australian women over 50 years old, who through no fault of their own, cannot pay their rent or mortgage.

Narrated by Margot Robbie, the documentary lays bare the intersection of sexism, ageism and poverty.

Young Australians staying with their parents to save for a house deposit

Young Australians live with their parents to save for a house deposit

The rising cost of living, including a lack of affordable housing, has changed the financial landscape for Australia’s youth.
According to the Young People’s Financial Strategies: Insights from the Australian Youth Barometer report from Monash University, young Australians often defined financial security as being able to afford material needs without worrying about money.

Saving and investing were listed as their main strategies for financial security, but many factors could influence that in a negative way, including paying for housing.

Interviewees said the prospect of living independently, especially paying rent, was a potential threat to their ability to save.

NDIS Participants Unable to Access House Cleaning Services

A recent news article in Fairfax newspapers discussed a nationwide shortage of domestic cleaners due to the coronavirus pandemic. The labour shortage is indirectly impacting busy families who employ cleaners to help with domestic chores; and, more significantly, is causing genuine hardship for “vulnerable people who have funding for NDIS cleaning services, aged care or workers compensation packages.”

The article contains interviews with house cleaning business owners who have struggled to find staff. The recruitment problem is partly due to low wages, but also due to labour shortages caused by border closures — a lot of cleaning staff have traditionally been international students or backpackers on working holiday visas, however those people have not been allowed to enter Australia during the pandemic.

A reader’s comment on the article also suggests that outdoor home services like mowing and gardening have had trouble with staff shortages. However, a quick search online finds that there are other businesses providing services such as NDIS gutter cleaning services and residential window cleaning that do not appear to be impacted.

A government spokesperson from the Department of Home Affairs who was interviewed in the article said that the department is “clearing the backlog in applications” from international students and backpackers to enter the country. But that statement sounds like hot air for the businesses experiencing staff shortages, and for the NDIS participants who are suffering because they cannot access important cleaning services.  Does anyone seriously think that international students and backpackers who have been locked out of Australia for 2 years are going to take up low-paid cleaning jobs as soon as they are allowed to enter the country? Or are they more likely to do what they are entering the country to do, i.e. start studying or go backpacking?

Let’s hope that all NDIS participants across Australia are able to access affordable and reliable cleaning services again soon.

Labour shortages are impacting NDIS participants in need of house cleaning services

 

Tags

ACT Aged care COVID-19 Disabled people Editorial Government News Homelessness hou Housing Affordability Housing Crisis Industry News In the media Leadership National New Development NSW NT NZ Older people Opinion People in Housing pol Politics Public Housing QLD Refugees Rental affordability Rental crisis Research and reports SA Skills Social and Affordable Housing TAS Technologies Tiny House VIC WA Women Young people

About Us

Housinginfo.com.au is an online information resource that curates important news and updates regarding the Australian housing sector.

Copyright © All Rights Reserved 2024