It is official. Australia has the same number of properties available now as it did this time 17-years ago.
If ever there was ‘one chart’ which best illustrates that the so-called collective state and federal ‘leaders’ of this country are as useful as an inverted prick, we have produced it for you.
When it comes to housing demand, housing supply, homeownership, rental supply and property investment, there’s generations of evidence available to prove what works and what doesn’t work.
We also have indisputable evidence that housing supply in this country, especially rental supply, is a dog-ugly mess which is destined to get much worse.
Across 8 capital cities and 400 regional townships, there were currently only 30,307 properties available for rent at the end of October 2023.
That’s the same volume of rental properties that were available all the way back in October 2006.
But there’s 6.1 million more people living in Australia now.
From way back in the late 1950’s through to now, Australia’s homeownership rate has consistently been one of the best in the world, always hovering between 68 and 72 percent. It still is.
No matter the specific challenges that occurred from year to year, 7 out of 10 households have attained homeownership.
As for the other 3 out of 10 Australian households who rent their home, rental accommodation has been readily available throughout the entire 50-years from 1970 onwards.
I’ve studied the evidence.
The only exception to that 50-year ‘norm’ was isolated instances of locations which, due to unique local circumstances, had a few years here and then of tight rental conditions.
In each of those 50-years, rental demand accelerated from the population in the 20 to 35 years of age bracket consistently increasing by circa 100,000 per year, along with consistently strong overseas migration.
The size of Australia’s rental pool always managed to keep up with demand.
Although government-supplied housing has always been a miserable contribution to the rental pool. Always.
In fact, the 300,000 rental homes currently owned by all of the combined states and federal government is the same as it was way back in 1976.
How can any human possibly believe any political plonker trying to pretend that they “care about housing” when the total volume of housing stock funded by them is the same now as it was nearly 50-years ago.
Despite whatever they say when standing on a podium, the most compelling fact from their collective ‘housing solutions’ over the decades is their clip on every real estate ticket increasing from a $6 billion tax on property buyers in 2006 to now more than $36 billion per year (stamp duty is opioids for governments).
What do the plonkers really care about?
Fortunately for Australia’s rental population, there was always a sufficient number of everyday Aussies who were motivated to pursue financial independence and were prepared to invest their own money into the essential service of rental accommodation.
At no stage during the 50-years since 1970 has there ever been anything remotely close to a ‘rental crisis’ right across Australia.
Three cheers to the modern-day plonker – what an incredible legacy to create!
The dog-ugly mess that Australia is now in was created by a collection of certified cock-ups, commencing in April 2015.
Back in 2015, the rental vacancy rate itself was not a problem. The (then) national population of 23.9 million people had 69,200 properties advertised for rent in April 2015.
The real problem was the change in attitudes and core values, and a complete lack of understanding about rental supply.
I have been providing ‘feedback’ to federal and state policy writers since 2015.
Sometimes that feedback has been quite colourful, but it has always contained statistical evidence, an expert explanation of cause-and-effect, and always coming from a sincere place of concern.
Given the extreme shit-show that everyone now refers to as the ‘Rental Crisis’, it is crystal clear that all the feedback fell on deaf ears.
The evidence in the earlier graphic contains indisputable proof that the more shit that political plonkers has thrown on the pile, the more suffocated Australia’s rental supply has become.
The last time the national rental pool was at equilibrium (2.5 percent vacancy rate) was mid-2019.
Large parts of the country, especially in regional Australia, have endured very tight rental markets since well before then.
For the last 4-6 years, tenants have been either fighting over rental ‘crumbs’, thereby forcing rents higher and displacing others to couches and caravans.
At the same time, an increasing number of landlords have removed properties from the rental pool after becoming sick of having shit thrown at them.
Plonkers sure can put on a show.
It is evident in the level of rage (landlords and tenants) which continues to intensify throughout society.
For the ignorant who need their recency bias checked, be clear that overseas migration did *not* cause the chaos.
If anything, given that Australia had 2-consecutive years of negative migration, there should be a significant surplus of rental accommodation.
The evidence proves that, too.
The rental crisis is an embarrassing, politically-inflicted mess. A shining example of socialist horse shit!
The question now is ‘what next?’
On top of the existing (say) 200,000 wannabe tenants who currently cannot secure rental accommodation, an extra 150,000 or so per year require rental accommodation.
Think teenagers becoming adolescents and overseas migrants needing shelter.
The next green column in the above chart needs to be supercharged.
But the plonkers remain totally fixated on running even more episodes of their Rocky Horror Shit Show.
Propertyology are national buyer’s agents and Australia’s premier property market analyst. Every capital city and every non-capital city, Propertyology analyse fundamentals in every market, every day. We use this valuable research to help everyday Aussies to invest in strategically-chosen locations (literally) all over Australia. Like to know more? Contact us here.
Here’s how we combine our thought-leading research with Propertyology’s award-winning buyer’s agency services.
