Housing shortage “diminishing rapidly”
Population growth is continuing to slow, but dwelling construction is booming.
Population growth is continuing to slow, but dwelling construction is booming.New figures from CoreLogic show annual population growth has fallen from a peak of 459,504 in December 2008 to 326,073 last calendar year. In spite of this, CoreLogic research analyst Cameron Kusher said dwelling construction continues to grow.
“While we’ve seen population growth and demand for housing slow down, dwelling construction has increased to record highs. Over the 12 months to December 2015, there was a record-high 190,072 dwellings constructed nationally,” Kusher said.
The CoreLogic figures showed the ratios of population growth to dwelling completions at 2:4 in NSW, 1:9 in Victoria and 1:6 in Queensland.
How oversupply could endanger the apartment market
“Based on the measure of population increase compared to dwelling construction compared to the average household size, it would appear that each state and territory is currently over-building,” Kusher said.However, Kusher said states like New South Wales and Victoria were still under-building.
“In most states, in the past there has been a substantial undersupply of housing which will continue to overhang any overbuilding for a period of time,” he said.
Kusher urged developers to “take heed” of the figures and “exercise caution when looking to undertake new projects”.
“As population growth trends lower and construction ramps up, housing shortages appear to be diminishing quite rapidly.”
