Apartment gluts
Quarterly dwelling starts fell to just 43,000 in the first quarter of 2019, down from more than 58,000 a year earlier.
We don't yet know the figure for the June quarter of 2019, but given it was election time, I expect the figure will have cratered even further.
Now we have some more up-to-date population estimates, let's take a quick look around the traps at dwelling supply versus underlying demand.
Of course there is much more to housing demand than simply population growth, but it's a decent proxy over time.
In New South Wales there was a long period of under-building from 2006 to 2012, followed by a veritable starburst of new apartment buildings.
Population growth has accelerated over the years, and unit starts are only now crashing lower - overall, of all the cities Sydney has the biggest apartment overhang to work off.
In Melbourne, recent population growth is a little under-counted, and the pace of construction has remained by and large in line with the monstrous rate of headcount growth.
I expect to see a rental shortage to transpire here in time:
I expect to see a rental shortage to transpire here in time:
Queensland has a higher ratio of population growth to dwelling starts than either of the two most populous states, and the Brisbane rental market has been steadily tightening for a couple of years, after a wild period of over-building which peaked in 2016.
Interesting trends.
With both finance and apartment pre-sales now so much harder to come by, new dwelling starts may well fall by about 60,000 per annum from the peak.
