Visas rebound
Every third person I speak to at the moment seems to be jet-setting off to Portugal, or Italy, or Turkey.
I'm just planning a European trip myself, in fact.
Domestically, flight activity has also returned very close to pre-COVID levels.
So in the short term, at least, we should probably expect labour force tightness and capacity constraints to continue.
And on the plus side, this might mean some temporary respite from rental market pressures.
But there are signs that things are starting to revert.
Australia saw its number of temporary visa holders crash by more than ¾ million through the pandemic, from 2.41 million at the end of 2019 to just 1.64 million in Q3 2021.
Plotting the latest available statistics, and we can see that the rebound is now well and truly on.
By May 2022 there had been a rebound in temporary entrant visa holders of more than ¼ million.
International student visa numbers have rebounded strongly, but to date visitor and working holiday visa holder numbers have not (click to expand the image below for the details by category):
Source: Australian Government
It's not quite clear how many temporary visa holders will come back, and how quickly they might do so, but the trend on the chart and the record high number of job vacancies implies anywhere up to an increase of another 600,000 might be on the cards.
The warmer summer months tend to be a strong drawcard for both permanent migrants and temporary visitors alike.
Students tend to disappear overseas over the Xmas break, but these figures suggest that the traditionally busy January to March period could see immense pressure on hotels and short-stay accommodation, as well as the wider residential rental markets.
For context the latest rental vacancy rate was a 16-year low of just 1 per cent in May, which equates to around 36,500 rental vacancies, according to SQM Research.
New arrivals into Australia are overwhelmingly renters initially, previous research has found.
