Population boom
Australia's capital cities are heaving, just in case you hadn't noticed.
Annual permanent and long-term arrivals surged to their highest ever level at 845,840 for the year to March 2019, up from 796,510 a year earlier.
It's interesting that, like in Britain, immigration has cooled as a red-hot point of contention, even though arrivals are at their highest ever level.
Lower unemployment rates probably help in that regard.
There's also been an immense boom in tourism to Australia over the past half decade, especially in Victoria.
This now looks to have reached something akin to a peak, though a weakening Aussie dollar could yet reignite the trend.
A key drag here is likely to be tighter capital controls in China - its own versing of policy easing - making it harder for Chinese tourists to live it up overseas as they once might have.
Australia has also made it less attractive for Chinese investors to buy real estate, with punitive surcharges.
There have been no signs of a slowdown in education arrivals, however, which are also at record highs.
Overall, huge numbers across the board.
Non-resi undersupply
One-time Sydneysider (and nowadays fellow part-time Pom) James Aitken of Aitken Advisors was back in his native Sydney lately, and I gather he was rather taken aback by the sheer level of activity and bustle in his former home city, especially in secondary hubs such as Liverpool.
There has of course been a huge boom in the construction of generic apartments, but given the rollicking rate of growth in the city's headcount, a structural oversupply of dwellings is hardly going to be an issue that persists for long.
Moreover, the focus on the construction of residential units to the exclusion of almost all else has left Sydney with a pressing infrastructure deficit, and as well as an undersupply of office and other commercial space, with industrial vacancy rates also running very low.
This is a potential plus for the Sydney economy, since the slowdown of residential construction can at least to some extent be handed off to non-residential construction and works.
Sydney's unemployment rate has also fallen close to its lowest ever level as many incumbent residents have drifted north to cheaper, warmer, and more relaxed south-east Queensland.
Even in Brisbane travel times are now blowing out regularly due to traffic congestion.
The housing downturn is grabbing lots of headlines in Sydney and Melbourne, with some of the once-popular Chinese suburbs (e.g. Box Hill, Epping, Ryde, etc.) getting walloped and recording big dollar value falls for houses.
This is especially so for potential development sites, whereby buyers overpaid or over-capitalised at the market's peak.
Still I've noticed established units next to nodes within a short commute of the Sydney CBD have often recorded strong results, and the worsening of capital city traffic is surely a factor in that trend.
First homebuyer incentives probably have supported that sector too.
