As expected, the Housing Industry Association (HIA) has used its pre-Budget submission to lobby for a return to mass immigration.
The lobby group warns that the closure of Australia’s international borders will result in reduced demand for housing, which is in turn likely to see residential construction activity fall sharply in 2022. Master Builders Australia has also highlighted the effect of migration on demand for housing.
From The Australian:
In a pre-budget submission, the HIA said the disruption to immigration and drop in population growth would “weigh on demand for housing”. “This drop in demand is expected to manifest in a material drop in residential building activity in 2022,” the submission says…
The MBA told Treasury migration to Australia was the “biggest influencing factor on housing demand”, with expectations migration would remained stalled through 2021-22.
“This will reduce underlying demand for new home building and is one of the biggest medium-term concerns for residential building businesses,” the MBA submission says.
“Our forecasts indicate that the retreat of overseas migration will impact the demand for high-density housing more severely than lower density housing…
The HIA, which wants the government to remove the cap of 160,000 permanent migrants a year and develop a new population strategy with medium and long-term targets, said the government should consider easing restrictions for foreign residential property buyers.
The property lobby is obviously scared senseless by this chart from the National Housing Finance & Investment Corporation (NHFIC) forecasting massive oversupply in 2021 and 2022:
The only way to fill these surplus homes is via hundreds of thousands of warm immigrant bodies.
Of course, the negative externalities of expanding the population on ordinary residents is ignored entirely by these parasites.
Mass immigration led development is the ultimate Ponzi scheme, with the property industry privatising the gains while the costs are socialised on the existing population via funding the increasing infrastructure needs (water, power, transport, recreation facilities etc), as well as suffering the downsides via increasing congestion, being crammed into defective high-rise apartments, paying higher housing costs, and lower wages.
Indeed, the HIA acknowledged these negative externalities previously:
The head of the association which represents housing developers says federal government policies encouraging immigration are helping to drive up property prices in Australian cities to unaffordable levels…
[Ron] Silberberg told the summit a generation of Australians face the prospect of never being able to afford their own home, while having to pay higher rents.
He says continued migration into Australia is partly to blame.
“On the basis of current levels of immigration, the underlying requirement for new housing is equivalent to about 170,000 new dwellings a year, much higher than the average level of home construction over the past decade.”
A Ponzi scheme is no way to apply government policy for the good of the citizenry.
The housing industry should meet the needs of Australians. Not the other way round.
Sadly, in the property Narco state of Australia, the lobbyists pull the strings.
