Yahoo News Up to 136,000 houses are empty in Australia – find out where they are
Up to 136,000 dwellings could be sitting unused across Australia, according to new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The bureau’s new housing snapshot data, which provides an overview of the housing landscape during June 2021, debunks the widely reported idea that one million homes are empty across the country – a number that came from misinterpreted census data.
Related: Melbourne city moves towards limiting short-stay rentals such as Airbnb
However, there were thousands of properties going unused in capital cities, with almost 6,000 alone in the Brisbane local government area.
It comes as federal and state governments face pressure to fix the housing crisis, though experts were not convinced addressing the number of unused dwelling was the solution.
The self-dubbed “experimental” population and housing data was built from administrative sources – including a register of all known physical addresses in Australia, the multi-agency data integration project (Madip) combining information on income and taxation, and electricity consumption data showing where there are signs of activity.
At the time of the snapshot, the Madip data and electricity data both found 1.3% of all dwellings showing no sign of recent use. 89% of dwellings were in use as a primary residence and 9.7% were not.
It finds thousands of homes not in use in city areas. The Melbourne local government area is documented as having the highest proportion of inactive dwellings, with 4,449 dwellings not in use, making up 5% of dwellings.
There are 3,568 dwellings not in use in Sydney, making up 3.1% of the LGA.
And in the Brisbane LGA, there are 5,952 dwellings not in use, proportionally lower at 1.2% of all dwellings.
Using Madip data, the Northern Territory had the highest proportion of inactive dwellings, at 2.4% of all dwellings. According to electricity data, South Australia was the highest at 1.9%.
Remote and regional areas have high percentages of inactive housing, which the ABS report says may in part be due to dwellings with “poorly recorded source addresses”. Some remote and regional areas have also seen declines in population, according to census data.
Dwellings may be inactive for various reasons. The most significant contributor to livable dwellings being unoccupied is people owning second homes, Dr Thomas Sigler, an associate professor in economic and urban geography at the University of Queensland, says.
“A lot of people have holiday homes that they don’t use, or vice versa.”
Also to note is the potential anomaly that was the assessed period of June 2021 – which Sigler says was “a bit of a weird year”. “It was the only year in modern history where Australia had net negative overseas migration”.
The Covid pandemic saw a mass exodus of people from Australia returning to home countries, which Sigler says could include property owners. Overseas investors may have also been unable to occupy their properties in Australia.
Sigler also points to the large amount of property construction that took place during 2021, following property-purchasing incentives such as the homebuilder grant.
“So it could be that houses were constructed, and not yet occupied.”
Two years on, Sigler guessed the number of unoccupied dwellings would now be much lower than the assessed period of June 2021.
“The borders have opened back up so there’s a lot more migrants on shore, and there’s a lot more residents back on shore,” he said.
“A lot of people who’ve owned second dwellings may have actually chosen to go live in their second dwelling full-time. I’m thinking of downsizing baby boomers, who may be moving to the coast, and then selling up in the cities.
“Also rents have risen, so there is more of an incentive from an owner to lease the property out.”
Though there is currently an affordability and rental availability crisis affecting Australian renters and first-time homeowners, Sigler does not think penalising vacancy will solve the housing crisis.
“The housing landscape in Australia is effectively a free market,” he says. “It’s borderline libertarian, you can do whatever … you want as long as it conforms to relevant environmental and town planning regulations.
“There’s going to be some casualties, there’s going to be some collateral damage, and we see that in periods of crisis, this is one of them.
“Oftentimes the people benefiting from them, and the policymakers are pretty divorced from the people who are actually in crisis mode.”
Speaking broadly, scarcity keeps the beast ticking, Sigler says.
“It’s a capitalist financialised system that ultimately does benefit most people over the age of 40, and benefits most people who are white-collar educated, who are exactly the people setting the policies.”
Related: Australian house prices rise for sixth straight month as capital cities drive increase
Dr Frank Zou, a research fellow from University of Queensland school of the environment, says the different means of data-gathering would enrich understanding of the housing landscape and complement census data.
Previously, housing data collected was based purely on address, which Zou says kept the research scope narrow.
“If people are not on site during census night, it’s really difficult to understand all those unoccupied dwellings” he says. “We do need more granularities in our data, and also awareness of data, to help us evaluate from both the supply and demand side of the story about the housing market.”
