10 . Off the plan to continue to recover while new home builds stabilise
Australia is experiencing negative migration however this is yet to have any impact on the supply of new homes . It has of course been HomeBuilder that has had the biggest impact on the demand for house and land . When the grant was introduced , approvals shot up to record levels as buyers , a lot of them first home buyers , took advantage of it .
Meanwhile , apartments , which are primarily purchased by investors , saw a much more muted impact . Investors , unable to access HomeBuilder have taken longer to come back into the market . There was an increase in apartment approvals however this was largely driven by owner-occupiers .
At the end of March , HomeBuilder ended and although this is yet to show up in building approval data , the Housing Industry Association saw an immediate drop in new home sales . After hitting a peak of 13,527 home purchases in December 2020 , the number of sales dropped 67 per cent to 4,418 in April 2021 .
While it ’ s impossible to know how many of these new purchases were demand pulled forward , or demand that was building up , it ’ s likely that we will see more subdued conditions over the rest of the year for house and land .
Meanwhile , investors are well and truly back and with apartment rents coming back in many cities , we should start to see more activity for off the plan . This cycle , it ’ s likely that our biggest cities of Sydney and Melbourne will be a little slower to start with south-east Queensland and parts of regional Australia kicking off with higher levels of apartment construction .
DWELLINGS APPROVED BY TYPE - AUSTRALIA
16,000 14,000 12,000 10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000
0
Apr-06 Sep-06 Feb-07 Jul-07 Dec-07 May-08 Oct-08 Mar-09 Aug-09 Jan-10 Jun-10 Nov-10 Apr-11 Sep-11 Feb-12 Jul-12 Dec-12 May-13 Oct-13 Mar-14 Aug-14 Jan-15 Jun-15 Nov-15 Apr-16 Sep-16 Feb-17 Jul-17 Dec-17 May-18 Oct-18 Mar-19 Aug-19 Jan-20 Jun-20 Nov-20 Apr-21
Source : ABS , Ray White HOUSE
UNIT
14