Earlier this month, The Guardian’s Cait Kelly wrongly blamed the reduction in shared house living over the pandemic for Australia’s rental crisis:
“People leaving share houses during the pandemic lockdowns in search of more space are touted as one key reason behind the rise in low vacancy rates and high rents”.
“But community manager at Flatmates.com.au, Claudia Conley, said the trend is reversing”.
New data from the ANU’s Ben Phillips counters this claim, showing that the number of adults per Australian dwelling has risen back to pre-pandemic levels:
Source: Ben Phillips (ANU)
“Persons per dwellings (adults) looks to be increasing – roughly lowering demand for housing by about 100,000 dwellings since mid-2021”, Phillips noted via Twitter (X).
The shift back into group housing is reflected by the latest data from Flatmates.com.au, which this month reported that demand for share housing on the portal has surged.
“October has been our fourth busiest month on the platform this year, after our usual peak summer period”, Flatmates.com.au Community Manager, Claudia Conley explained.
“The volume of traffic we’ve seen on Flatmates.com.au in October we don’t usually see until December, indicating that demand for share accommodation is heating up well ahead of our peak season”.
“2023 has been Flatmates.com.au’s busiest year on record, due to a record-breaking summer and without our typical seasonal winter slump. It’s clear more Australians are turning to share accommodation as pressures on the rental market and a cost-of-living crisis fail to die down”, Conley said.
Despite the increase in shared living, Australia’s rental vacancy rate has collapsed to a record low of just 0.9% across the combined capital cities:
Source: CoreLogic
The culprit is obvious: Australia’s record immigration-driven population growth, which saw Australia’s population swell by an unprecedented 626,000 in the 2022-23 financial year, according to the ABS national accounts:
Source: Cameron Kusher (PropTrack)
With Australia’s population expanding at a much faster rate than homes are being built (see next chart), this inevitably means that more Australians will be forced to live in share housing. Otherwise, homelessness awaits.
Housing will become increasingly cramped and expensive under the Albanese government’s mass immigration policy.
