A full blown rental crisis has been declared by Domain, whose quarterly rental report showed Australia “is experiencing the longest stretch of continuous rental price growth on record”, highlighting “the rental crisis the country is currently going through”:
Domain pins the blame for the extreme rental growth on “the influx of overseas migrants, international students, and temporary visa holder numbers”.
“The return of international travel in 2021 and 2022 saw Australia’s net overseas migration gain hit almost 304,000 new people in the 12 months to September 2022, providing a significant boost of population gain for Australia”, Domain’s Chief of Research and Economics, Nicola Powell said.
“The proportion of overseas migrant arrivals that were temporary visa holders is now sitting at 61% – a substantial driver of rental demand. The impact of migration was further highlighted following the announcement from China’s Ministry of Education to stop acknowledging degrees gained online in January”.
“This saw the number of rental searches on Domain from China jump 124% over the March quarter compared to last year”, added Powell.
“With more demand for rentals and not enough supply, renters will continue to face limited choices and tough competition, particularly for cities that traditionally see a higher intake of residents from overseas like Sydney and Melbourne”.
The National Housing Finance & Investment Corporation’s (NHFIC) latest State of the Nation’s Housing report, released this week, forecasts that housing demand will exceed supply by 124,100 dwellings over the five years to 2028, driven by record net overseas migration:
NHFIC warns that renters will cop it in the neck, noting that “returning migration at a time of low vacancy rates is likely to result in upward pressure on rents”.
In particular, “rents are picking up strongly in the cities that receive the bulk of overseas workers and international students, such as Sydney and Melbourne”, according to NHFIC.
While the cause of Australia’s rental crisis is obvious – record net overseas migration – Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) governor Phil Lowe on Wednesday pinned the blame on “rigid” planning restrictions across local and state governments.
“It comes down to zoning and planning and the cost of developing new subdivisions”, Lowe said at an address to the National Press Club.
“We need to be able to have the supply side of the housing market respond quickly when population growth changes, and if we can’t do that then we’ll have big movements in rents and housing prices”.
“I’m not going to kind of express views on the government policy, but I just know it’s a really important issue for us to resolve”.
Earth to idiot. The record immigration rebound has been deliberately engineered by the Albanese Labor Government, which made a range of policy changes after last year’s federal election to turbo-charge the numbers of international arrivals. These changes include:
- Increasing the permanent (non-humanitarian) migrant intake to a record high 195,000 people a year (up 35,000).
- Increasing the number of hours international students can work and how long they can stay after they finish their studies.
- Committing 500 new staff and $42 million of funding to clear ‘visa backlogs’.
In turn, Australia’s population increased by a record high 482,000 people in 2022 driven by record net overseas migration of around 400,000:
2023 is shaping up for an even larger intake of net overseas migration, which will only make the rental crisis worse.
It is gaslighting for Phil Lowe to blame a lack of housing supply when rational people know that extreme immigration is the major cause of the housing and rental crisis.
The housing and rental crisis could be fixed with the stroke of a pen by reducing immigration back to the historical average of below 100,000 people a year.
The least Phil Lowe can do is be honest about the issue and apportion blame for the housing crisis at the real culprit.
Otherwise, the federal government will forever persist with its irresponsible mass immigration policy and housing shortages will become a permanent feature of Australia.
Rents will continue to hyperinflate and thousands of Australians will be thrown onto the streets.
Lying about the cause of a problem is no way to conduct public policy.
