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Wednesday 11 September 2019

Net arrivals close to 300,000 per annum

Immigration pumping

For the first time in a while there was a decrease in the rolling annual number of permanent and long-term arrivals into Australia, at 844,680 (up from 818,480 a year earlier, and close to the record highs). 

Departures have declined over the past couple of months, so the net arrivals figure has remained fairly steady at +298,360.

Click to expand the chart:


There's no direct or precise link to the growth in the estimated resident population, but with the annual natural population increase (births minus deaths) running at around 156,000 we might expect to see population growth of well over 400,000 in 2019.

Short-term arrivals also powered to a record 800,000, driven by record Indian visitors, and Chinese as usual.

In 2018-19 Australia was graced with a record 9.3 million short-term visitors, with China taking the top spot at 1.43 million.

That's an increase of 3.8 million from a decade earlier.

Clearing the glut

That's a rollicking rate of growth, then, that should help to clear the glut of apartments fairly quickly.

Brisbane is well ahead of the curve in this regard, with construction having slowed some years ago, and the council restricting new development going forward.

And the city's vacancy rate falling from above 4 per cent in 2016 to under 2½ per cent, in part helped by interstate migration pushing on to decade highs. 

The New Farm and Teneriffe postcode figures below are a useful bellwether for the inner city rentals market (chart via SQM Research's excellent free data series).