Vanishing Households Undercut Claim of Australia Shortage

[redwing]

I think Matusik had queried numbers also?

Vanishing Households Undercut Claim of Australia Shortage from Bloomberg

Australia has almost 1 million fewer households than assumed in government forecasts of a housing shortage, raising doubts about a supply shortfall cited as the main reason the nation will avoid a U.S.-style crash.

The Pacific nation had 7.8 million households, data released yesterday from the 2011 Census showed. That compared with estimates of 8.7 million as of June 2010, according to the latest figures used by the National Housing Supply Council, a group created by the government in May 2008 to monitor housing demand, supply and affordability. Australia’s population also grew by 300,000 less than previously estimated, to 21.5 million.

The number of single-person households slipped to 24.3 percent from 24.4 percent in 2006, the census showed. Photographer: Ian Waldie/Bloomberg

Australia faces a shortage of about 369,000 homes by 2016, under a medium household growth scenario, which assumes the nation will have 9.7 million households by that time, the council said in a report released last week. Photographer: Brendon Thorne/Bloomberg
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“There’s been a bit of a disconnect between the estimates between the census points and the actual census data,” said David Cannington, Melbourne-based economist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. (ANZ) “My feeling is that some of the underlying housing demand numbers will be revised down.”

Australia faces a shortage of about 369,000 homes by 2016, under a medium household growth scenario, which assumes the nation will have 9.7 million households by that time, the council said in a report released last week. While home prices across Australia’s eight state capitals fell for a fifth consecutive quarter in the three months through March, the longest stretch of losses on record, the Council has maintained that the gap between supply and underlying demand has widened.

‘Gigantic Difference’

The council’s figures are based on the last census, conducted in 2006, with adjustments for additions and reductions of homes, said Owen Donald, Sydney-based chairman of the National Housing Supply Council, in a telephone interview.

“On the face of it, 900,000 is a gigantic difference,” he said. “We need to get to the bottom of what’s in the statistics bureau numbers.”

Cont........

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[landlubber]

I would not trust ANYTHING published by the NHSC. I've seen some of there "statistics" and deductions before. What a total load of rubbish !! My read is they are just another leftie mob gorging themselves at the tax payer funded trough and spreading misleading information about a housing shortage. If there's TRULY a shortage why aren't prices and rents rising sharply? LL

 

[redwing]

I found Matusik's quote

By Michael Matusik
Wednesday, 31 August 2011

Australia’s population growth has slowed by close to 150,000 in just two years, with a 100,000 drop in the actual growth rate over the last 12 months. As a result, the underlying demand for new housing has dropped from 180,000 starts per annum to around 125,000. While dwelling starts are declining, we are now building too much stock.

Unless new housing starts decline in earnest or population growth accelerates, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory face an oversupply. Perth and Canberra are better positioned, with Queensland currently at equilibrium and New South Wales undersupplied.

Much of Victoria’s potential pain lies in Melbourne’s recent inner-city apartment boom, during which an unprecedented proportion of the state’s new dwelling starts are apartments. This mostly speculator-fuelled surge has provided some very misleading media headlines of late about the rise of apartment living and how it is becoming the new Australian dream. Yet two-thirds of Australians continue to buy a detached dwelling.

What?! This cannot be right. The housing industry and banking economists keep reminding us how undersupplied the Australian housing market is. Don’t we have a shortfall of something like 300,000 new homes across the country? And isn’t this shortfall going to double in size within the next decade?

But I ask you, with an average of 2.6 people per dwelling (as per the 2006 census), where are these 800,000-odd displaced people living? Yes, too many are living it rough, but 800,000 people equate to two cities the size of Canberra or one and a half of the Gold Coast. Where are all these people living? I don’t see thousands sleeping in cardboard boxes in Queen Street, for example.

Cont on Link...

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[redwing]

There was also this (older) post on a Matusik Update by Spectre

Historical posts are always good reading

Matusik Update

 

[redwing]

I would not trust ANYTHING published by the NHSC. I've seen some of there "statistics" and deductions before. What a total load of rubbish !! My read is they are just another leftie mob gorging themselves at the tax payer funded trough and spreading misleading information about a housing shortage. If there's TRULY a shortage why aren't prices and rents rising sharply? LL

Looks like you were correct

Apparently there were taking into account homeless people, those in caravan parks etc and had used some rubbery figures, then rounded up also?

Housing undersupply? You shouldn?t count on it

The chairman of the federal government?s National Housing Supply Council says recent estimates that Australia has an undersupply of 228,000 homes could be incorrect.

The comments by NHSC chairman Owen Donald come after ABS Census figures released last month showed vast differences between the population numbers used by the council to draw its conclusions and census conclusions. The census found there were 1.1 million fewer households than in estimates used by the NHSC, and 595,000 fewer private dwellings.

Adjusted by Morgan Stanley researchers to allow for a potential census under count, the 228,000-home undersupply becomes a 341,000-home oversupply.

Research released yesterday by Morgan Stanley argued affordability and the willingness of households to leverage up are much greater drivers of demand than whether construction is keeping up with population growth.

 

[landlubber]

NHSC is total rubbish

They should be eliminated. There are any number of organisations that could provide MUCH better data to the gov't. We can only hope Tony has them "on his list". Go Tony !! LL