Byron Bay area's median house price was up $550,000, the largest price hike in dollar terms and topping Sydney's record $1.6 million median - up 33.1 per cent last year.

 

Australia-wide House & Unit purchase price growth December Quarter 2021

IMAGE: Domain Group, https://www.domain.com.au/group/media-releases/australias-median-house-prices-now-over-1-million/

DailyTelegraph, 28 January 2022:

House prices in pockets of regional NSW are rising at a faster rate than in Sydney, as ongoing demand from sea and tree changers pushes prices to record heights.

Prices across a string of local government areas have jumped by more than a third year-on-year, new Domain figures for the December quarter reveal.

The Snowy Monaro Regional Council area recorded the largest gain, with the median house price climbing 50.8 per cent to $585,000.

It was closely followed by the Kiama and Byron local government areas, where house prices rose about 48 per cent, to respective medians of $1.495 million and $1.7 million. The Byron area's median was up $550,000, the largest price hike in dollar terms and topping Sydney's record $1.6 million median - up 33.1 per cent last year.

Kiama's neighbouring council area of Wingecarribee, which takes in Bowral, was also among the strongest performing markets, with the median up 37.2 per cent to $1.18 million. As were the Ballina, Tweed and Lismore regions, which all saw prices rise at least 32 per cent over the year, as the rapid price gains seen in Byron rippled out across the state's north east.

Domain's chief of research and economics Nicola Powell said regional NSW price rises had picked up momentum last quarter, with house prices up 12.5 per cent to $720,000 - taking annual growth to 27.5 per cent. It marked regional NSW's strongest quarterly price rise on Domain records and was also more than double the growth seen in the previous three months.

An increase in sea and tree changers looking to leave city living behind during the pandemic, and the rise in remote working, had been driving strong demand and price growth in regional markets, Dr Powell said. As had an increase in cashed-up buyers looking to purchase holiday homes, while international travel remained off the table.

A post-lockdown spike in market activity was likely key to the record growth seen over the past quarter, Dr Powell added.

Tree and sea changers, who had been renting in regional areas, may also have opted to buy as time passed and they committed to a permanent relocation.

Increased demand has seen houses in the Snowy Monaro Regional Council area - including towns such as Jindabyne, Thredbo, Berridale and Cooma - jump $197,000 year-on-year to a median of $585,000 recorded over the six months to December. Prices there have now more than doubled over the past five years.

First National Real Estate Kosciuszko principal Gordon Jenkinson said an influx of tree changers and holiday home buyers from Sydney and Canberra had been the key driver of rapid growth. However, Snowy 2.0 and a shortage of new homes and land in Jindabyne, as developers await a new master plan for the Snowy Mountains precinct, were also playing a role.

"COVID-19 has been a huge influence ... we're getting heaps of the younger demographic, especially guys into outdoor activities, who can now work remotely," he said. "If you're really keen on a sea change there are plenty of coastal towns that offer that beachy feel but alpine and subalpine areas are few."

Mr Jenkinson said land had been selling for outrageous amounts, noting two vacant blocks in Jindabyne recently sold for more than $650,000 and had traded for between $220,000-$240,000 about two years ago. A waterfront block in East Jindabyne that traded for $650,000 18 months ago had resold for $1.455 million.

North Coast news you may have missed this week.......

 

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced on Wednesday 28 July 2021 that up to 40,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine would be redirected from the state's rural and regional COVID-19 vaccine supply to help Year 12 students in some of Sydney's worst-affected suburbs get back to school for face-to-face learning.

But with several COVID-19 cases in regional towns, including Coffs Harbour, Orange and the Central Coast, residents reacted cautiously to the announcement. 

"There are frontline health care workers who [still] haven't been vaccinated [in regional areas]," Rural Doctors Association of Australia's CEO Peta Rutherford said. 

"We just say it with warning — if they're moving the vaccines into Sydney, we would expect, should there be an outbreak, that the Premier is prepared to move Sydney vaccines to a rural town if required." 

On the Mid North Coast, the mayor of Nambucca Heads, Rhonda Hoban, said despite no COVID-19 cases so far, there were a lot of vulnerable people in the community still waiting to be vaccinated. 

"We've got three times the state average of people over the age of 65, a high Indigenous population and a significantly higher than average number of people who suffer chronic health conditions," Councillor Hoban said. 

"The real issue has been that we've had close to 18 months and we still don't have enough vaccines. 

“If there was an outbreak in the Nambucca Valley and they rushed Pfizer here, immunity is not immediate.” 

Similar concerns were held by the Mayor of Lake Macquarie Kay Fraser, who said regional NSW was being treated like Sydney's "poorer cousin". 

“I have a real issue with it," she said. 

“If it’s going to come out of the Hunter region or some of those regional areas out at Orange, where there is COVID-19, I’m really concerned.”  [ABC News, 29 July 2021]

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Twenty-four 24 brand new homes funded by a $4.1 million grant by the NSW Government - 12 two-bedroom and 12 single-bedroom - are to be built in South Grafton for disadvantaged families in partnership with North Coast Community Housing.

Work is expected to begin on the Bimble Ave site in South Grafton early in 2021, following council approval.

“North Coast Community Housing CEO John McKenna said the project would help alleviate housing stress by providing a significant boost to housing options in Grafton.

“The mixed tenure development is aimed at addressing three issues in the current housing market by offering six of the units for sale, nine units at an affordable rent for key workers and nine units for those most in need of social housing,” Mr McKenna said.” [DailyTelegraph, 28 July 2021]

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Details of the fines issued to 26 year-old George Thompson who breached the Greater Sydney lockdown by flying to Ballina on 14 July 2021 before being driven across the NSW-Qld border where allegedly “he used someone else's details to check into venues around Brisbane…..

July 26: Mr Thompson was fined $4,000 for failing to comply with a border direction, $4,000 for providing false information and $1,300 for failing to comply with a direction from an emergency officer. Ms Gray was fined $4,000 failing to comply with a border direction.” [Daily Mail, 29 July 2021]

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Rental housing is becoming beyond the reach of locals in 2021

ABC News, 1 March 2021:

After years of supporting others to find secure accommodation, Cherie Bromley never imagined she would find herself on the receiving end of the housing crisis on the far north coast of New South Wales.

Key points:

Valuable members of regional communities are being forced out of the area due to a shortage of affordable rental properties

A woman who applied for rental properties says she was told the successful applicants offered to pay $100 more than the advertised price

The head of a homeless support group says many of her own staff are struggling to find accommodation for themselves

"I didn't even approach the real estates because I just knew there was nothing out there," she said.

For the past decade, Ms Bromley has been working for the Byron Community Centre, which provides a number of services, including support for the town's homeless population.

The Byron Bay resident of 29 years said she began the search for a home when the lease on her share house ended late last year, thrusting her into a rental market with a vacancy rate close to zero.

"This is the worst it's ever been," she said.

"There is no housing stock that is affordable."

Ms Bromley said she was extremely fortunate to have a good network of friends who were able to find her and her 14-year-old daughter temporary accommodation.

"I'm sleeping in the kitchen area [and] I gave my daughter the bedroom, but I have to pass through her bedroom to go to the bathroom," she said.

"It's not sustainable long-term."

Cherie Bromley is sharing a one-bedroom unit with her teenage daughter.
(ABC North Coast: Leah White)

'Catastrophic proportions'

The term "traumatic experience" is not one Ballina solicitor Sadie Hunt thought she would ever use to describe trying to secure a rental property in regional NSW.

After all, she works in conveyancing, has a regular and respectable income, and has contacts in the local real estate industry — how hard could it be?

"I thought I had a pretty good chance of getting a rental property, but I was rejected from all the properties I applied for," Ms Hunt said.

"I was basically told that if you weren't a DINK (double income, no kids) … you just had zero chance of getting a rental property."

Ms Hunt said she sold her Lennox Head property in November 2020 and gave herself a five-week settlement period to find a new place.

But she said even the first hurdle into the rental market — property viewings — proved challenging.

"You get sent an email and if you don't respond to that email within two minutes those little 4-minute appointment slots are all filled," Ms Hunt said.

"You turn up and there's 30 to 50 people there … that you're essentially competing with to get a home for you and your family to live in."

Ms Hunt said she was able to find a private rental at the eleventh hour but was knocked back for the three rentals she applied for through real estate agents.

She said that the real estate agents later informed her that, in at least two of the homes she missed out on, other prospective tenants had offered higher rental payments to secure the properties…...

Right now a three bedroom house rental in Yamba is likely to cost between 35% and 50% of the 2020-21 middle tier median annual income of $67,000 in regional New South Wales. In Ballina a three bedroom rental is likely to take between 35% to 61% out of that same income if suitable housing stock is available. While renting a three bedroom home in Tweed Heads would reduce that median annual income by between 43% to 56% and, in Lismore such a rental would likely subtract between 34% to 43% from that $67,000 if there was suitable housing stock available.

A single parent raising a child on an annual Centrelink payment of $21,920 from March 2021 who is attempting to secure private rental of even a one-bedroom unit between Clarence Valley and the NSW-Qld border faces a daunting task.

According to media reports there are still 3,544 First Home Loan Deposit Scheme places left, before another 10,000 places are opened up on 1 July 2020

According to the Commonwealth Bank, the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme is a “new initiative from the Australian Government designed to support eligible first home buyers purchase a home sooner”.

The National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NHFIC) will provide a guarantee for eligible first home buyers on low and middle incomes so that they can purchase a home with a deposit of as little as 5%.

Residential properties eligible for this scheme are capped at between 300k and $700k depending on where they are situated.

In Yamba, Maclean and Grafton in the Clarence Valley the loan eligibility cap is a residential property valued at $450k. This same cap appears to apply to all of the NSW Northern Rivers region.

This cap deliberately limits the type of property which can be purchaed under the Scheme because it “is only available for the purchase of a modest home, or the purchase of land and construction of a modest home”.

In certain areas there may be a small problem attached to having such a low property value limit to eligibility for the scheme. A residential property at $450k or less in the Northern Rivers regions is usually only a two bedroom freestanding house or unit/duplex - hardly suitable for a family with more than one child.

The sheme is available to low to middle income eaners over 18 years of age. There is no upper age limit restriction, so an applicant could easily be in their late 50s.

The upper income limit before a person becomes ineligible to apply for this concession is $125k for singles and $200k for a couple.

The scheme will support up to 10,000 home loans each financial year, starting from 1 January 2020, through a panel of participating lenders including the Commonwealth Bank.”

According to media reports there are still 3,544 First Home Loan Deposit places left, before another 10,000 places are opened up on 1 July 2020.

Best Feel Good Tweet of 2019

Do you remember Nina Jongen, whose family home burned down in the Nymboida fires? She just won a tiny house. #NSWFires pic.twitter.com/WOILmnxTx1

— Calla Wahlquist (@callapilla) December 18, 2019

The house, which arrived with a stocked pantry, a Christmas tree and presents, was moved to their family property at Nymboida on Wednesday. It will allow them to return home for Christmas.....The house was supplied by Aussie Tiny Houses.

Quote of the Week

“High rents are a major contributor to household insecurity, personal stress and the risk of people, including children, slipping into real poverty and even homelessness. The North Coast rental market disadvantages many people because the competition for decent and affordable housing greatly outstrips supply. The reasons for this crisis are varied, including a general lack of rental stock, many houses in coastal towns becoming holiday rentals and the need to accommodate workers on the road projects, which results in inflated rents that stay that way after the workers move on.”  [St Vincent de Paul regional executive officer Michael Timbrell quoted in The Daily Examiner, 18 July 2019]

Climate Change creates risks for Australia’s financial stability warns Reserve Bank deputy governor

The Guardian, 12 March 2019:

A deputy governor of Australia’s central bank has issued a stark warning that climate change poses risks to financial stability, noting that warming needs to be thought of by policymakers and business as a trend and not a cyclical event.

As a debate over coal and energy fractures the Morrison government, Guy Debelle warned a forum hosted by the Centre for Policy Development on Tuesday that climate change created risks for Australia’s financial stability in a number of different ways.

“For example, insurers may face large, unanticipated payouts because of climate change-related property damage and business losses,” he said. “In some cases businesses and households could lose access to insurance.

 “Companies that generate significant pollution might face reputational damage or legal liability from their activities, and changes to regulation could cause previously valuable assets to become uneconomic.

“All of these consequences could precipitate sharp adjustments in asset prices, which would have consequences for financial stability.”

Debelle noted Australia had traditionally come at the climate change debate largely through the prism of its impact on agriculture, but he said the changing climate created “significant risks and opportunities for a broader part of the economy than agriculture – though the impact on agriculture continues to be significant”.

He said policymakers and businesses needed to “think in terms of trend rather than cycles in the weather”.

“Droughts have generally been regarded, at least economically, as cyclical events that recur every so often. In contrast, climate change is a trend change. The impact of a trend is ongoing, whereas a cycle is temporary.”

He said there was a need to reassess the frequency of climate change events, and “our assumptions about the severity and longevity of the climatic events”.

He said the insurance industry had already recognised the frequency and severity of tropical cyclones and hurricanes in the northern hemisphere had changed, and this reassessment had prompted the sector to reprice how they insure and reinsure against such events.

“We need to think about how the economy is currently adapting and how it will adapt both to the trend change in climate and the transition required to contain climate change,” Debelle said.

He said the transition path to a less carbon-intensive world was “clearly quite different depending on whether it is managed as a gradual process or is abrupt”.

“The trend changes aren’t likely to be smooth. There is likely to be volatility around the trend, with the potential for damaging outcomes from spikes above the trend.”

Debelle noted the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had provided “strong evidence” that another half degree of warming was likely in the next 10 to 30 years.

He said work from the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO pointed to an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events, and noted “extreme events may well have a disproportionately large physical impact”.

“There is also a greater possibility of compound events, where two or more climatic events combine to produce an outcome that is worse than the effect of one of them occurring individually,” Debelle said.

“Combined with the increased volatility, this increases the likelihood of nonlinear impacts on the economy.”

Debelle said assessed through that lens, climate change-induced shocks to the economy would be “close to permanent” if droughts were more frequent and cyclones happened more often. “That situation is more challenging to assess and respond to.”

On 13 March 2019 ABC News reported that a leading climate analyst warns that extreme weather risks mean nearly 1 in 10 Australian houses may be uninsurable due to climate change within the next few generations, that is in est. 30-90 years.

Quotes of the Week

“If you want to know what caused those conditions, I’ll give you an answer – it’s called climate change,” the Queensland premier told reporters. “It is only the LNP who could watch Queensland burn and then blame the trees.”  [Queensland Premier Anna Palaszczuk quoted in The Guardian, 7 December 2018]

“Last year, more Australians bought their seventh home than those who bought their first”  [Journalist Timothy Swanston quoting an incorrect statment by Queensland Minister for Housing and Public Works Mick de Brenni, ABC News, 8 December 2018]

 “Most people just consider Assange a spoilt-brat egomaniac with murky motives, a limelight habit and some profoundly questionable political affiliations.”  [Journalist Elizabeth Farrelly writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, 8 December 2018]

“Both Brandis and Turnbull were regularly labelled, and probably were what passes for, ‘moderates’ in the neoliberal alt-right nativist populist Trumpist tribal world, or whatever white patriarchy is called these days.”  [Academic and blogger Ingrid Matthews writing in oecomuse, 27 November 2018]

“Scott Morrison reminds me of a belligerent & angry Sunday School teacher. Protected by his Christian reputation but in reality just a nasty, angry, vengeful man”  [Elizabeth Marr on Twitter, 9 December 2018]

Australia 2018: Is long-term rental destroying the wellbeing of low income households?

Choice 2018, DISRUPTED The consumer experience of renting in Australia:

Across the nation, people who rent are living on insecure tenancies. Almost 9 in 10 Australians who rent (88%) are on leases of a year or less, and are not certain of where they will be living in a year’s time. This impacts a person’s ability to feel part of the local community and establish roots.

The Land, 1 May 2018:

AFFORDABLE rentals on the state’s North Coast are increasingly few and far between, but the continued rise of the Airbnb-model now sees 3000-plus homes sit empty while low-income and government-assisted tenants are shut out. 

Anglicare’s latest Housing Affordability Snapshot says the region’s rental crisis has worsened as property owners in Ballina, Byron Bay, and the Tweed are incentivised to target short-term holidaymakers through web-based booking companies instead of potential long-term renters. 

The Anglicare report, released on Sunday, showed available North Coast rental properties were in steep decline (down from 795 in 2017 to 660 in 2018) with all family groups on income support, and single households on minimum wage, likely to struggle to find housing for themselves and their children.

Clair, A. et al, 24 May 2016, The impact of housing payment problems on health status during economic recession: A comparative analysis of longitudinal EU SILC data of 27 European states, 2008–2010, excerpt:

Transitioning into housing arrears was associated with a significant deterioration in the health of renters…..

Housing arrears is one of the so-called ‘soft’ ways in which housing influences health (Shaw, 2004), especially mental health, alongside the ‘hard’, physical impacts of the infrastructure itself, such as damp, mould, and cold. A growing body of scholarship indicates that people who experience housing insecurity, independent of other financial difficulties, experience declines in mental health (Gili et al., 2012, Keene et al., 2015, Meltzer et al., 2013, Meltzer et al., 2011, Nettleton and Burrows, 1998). 

In Australia, analysis of the longitudinal HILDA dataset found that those in lower income households who had moved into unaffordable housing experienced a worsening in mental health (Bentley, Baker, Mason, Subramanian, & Kavanagh, 2011), with male renters faring worse (Bentley et al., 2012, Mason et al., 2013).

One has to wonder if being a long-term renter affects quality of life to such a degree that on average renters die earlier than home-owners.

I knew there was a reason why I don't watch Channel 9......

Never a fan of Channel 9 programming, this news report has turned my indifference to the existence of this television channel into active dislike.

ABC News, 21 November 2018:

PHOTO: The Block's contestants on auction day for the renovated Gatwick Hotel.   (AAP: Nine Entertainment)

The lights, cameras and crowds have finally cleared out of St Kilda following the auctions last month at the Gatwick Private Hotel, a run-down three-storey rooming house that was transformed into six multi-million-dollar apartments for this year's season of the popular home renovation show, The Block.

But as the new owners collect the keys and prepare to move in to their luxury lodgings, ABC News can reveal an "alarming" number of women who used to live at the Gatwick — a place of "last resort" for some of Melbourne's most vulnerable — are currently in jail.

Channel Nine's purchase of the 1930s mansion, which in its prime could house up to 120 people, was welcomed last year by St Kilda residents who blamed the Fitzroy Street boarding house — one of several to close in recent years as part of the area's gentrification — for local problems with "rampant" drug-fuelled violence and anti-social behaviour.

At the time, the local council and state government worked with housing services in St Kilda to find new accommodation, mostly outside the area, for its remaining occupants, who were evicted in time for filming to commence.

But many of those tenancies were unsustainable and fell through, homelessness support workers say, and because of an acute lack of crisis accommodation across Melbourne, dozens were dispersed onto the streets.

This includes at least 32 women who have since been charged and imprisoned for offences lawyers and support workers say are directly related to their homelessness — an issue that affects all genders but which leaves women particularly vulnerable.

Now, with the state preparing to head to the polls after an election campaign dominated by debate over law and order, advocates are calling on the government to urgently boost funding for crisis accommodation and homelessness services to break a vicious cycle that is causing the number of women in Victoria's prisons to soar.

One worker who runs a program supporting under-privileged women in St Kilda told ABC News that, since the beginning of 2018, 32 of her clients who were living on or off lease at The Gatwick have since been incarcerated at the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, Melbourne's maximum security women's prison.

Though 17 of those women have been released in recent months, she said, 15 still remain, many of them on remand.

"There is absolutely no doubt that The Gatwick's closure has had an effect particularly on women in the city of Port Phillip," said the worker, who asked not to be named because she feared speaking out would jeopardise her organisation's public funding arrangements.

"I'm not necessarily saying that The Gatwick was the best place for people to live because there were a lot of issues — there were some deaths there, there was violence. But everybody needs a place to stay."

The majority of the worker's clients in Dame Phyllis have been charged with drug-related offences which are believed to be a result of their homelessness, she said. "Many women with involvement in the justice system offend to fund their drug habit and use substances to self-medicate," she said.

"Sleeping rough is extremely unsafe for women so many use drugs to keep themselves awake at night, which provides them with a false sense of security."

Forced homelessness is not confined to Victoria,

As the Pacific Highway Upgrade works its way up the NSW North Coast there are reports of people couch surfing after their landlords gave them notice in favour of road worker tenants capable of paying higher rents.

The Turnbull Government has the solution to its poll number blues already at hand - but will it act?

lesterlost.com

State and federal governments have known for years that there is a correlation between unoccupied residential housing, negative gearing of investment properties and capital gains by individuals in the higher income percentiles.

According to 2011 census, in Sydney's "emptiest" neighbourhood of the CBD, Haymarket and The Rocks, one in seven dwellings was vacant.

By the time of the 2016 Census there were 200,000 more homes sitting empty across the country than there had been a decade ago.

An est. 11.2 per cent of residential properties were unoccupied, up from 9.8 per cent in 2006.

There is currently an artificial scarcity of residential housing in this country which governments seem intent on ignoring.

Similarly homelessness has increased in Australia and rental accommodation is frequently beyond the financial reach of many people whose sole income is a Centrelink pension, benefit, allowance or payment.

It has been reported in 2018 that 250 people are turned away from crisis centres across the country every day.

Again, governments are not paying enough attention to the social and economic costs to their own budgetary bottom line this growing problem will cause.

The latest Newspoll published on 13 May 2018 was conducted from Thursday 10 May to Sunday 13 May with 1,728 survey respondents.

It shows the Lib-Nat Coalition’s primary vote standing at 39% to Labor’s 38%. However the Coalition trailed Labor 49 to 51 on a two-party preferred basis, with that margin the coalition's best position since September 2016. 

That is the 32^nd Newspoll in a row where the Labor Opposition was ahead of the Turnbull Government on a two-party preferred basis.

If Turnbull & Co really wanted to turn primary and two-party preferred polling numbers around they would announce some substantial new policy measures in the months following the 2018-19 Budget.

The phasing out of negative gearing of investment properties over a ten year period, reforming capital gain provisions and creating more tied grants for social housing would be a good start.