Anti-trans activist given the green light to enter New Zealand, house sales plummet to a 40-year low and just how bad is the education crisis in the latest New Zealand Herald headlines. Video / NZ Herald
Residential rents reached record levels in the last two months, up to $595/week in January and $600/week in February – but an Auckland landlord who owns 12 properties says he’s surprised the rises were so
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KITCHENER — The City of Kitchener has pledged to build 35,000 new homes by 2031 to meet a provincial target set alongside new housing legislation.
Councillors unanimously approved the pledge at a meeting this week, which sets out a number of actions the city can take, or is already taking, to support residential development.
Along with Bill 23 — the More Homes Built Faster Act introduced last year — the province set a goal of building 1.5 million homes over the next decade, sent individual targets to 29 municipalities, and requested that they develop and submit a housing pledge.
The targets “are derived by the province and proscribed to us,” interim planning director Garett Stevenson told council, adding it’s believed the province relied on population and the ability to accommodate additional growth in setting the goals.
This week, Waterloo adopted its pledge to build more than 15,000 new homes, while Cambridge approved its pledge of 19,000 homes late last month.
“Tackling the housing crisis locally means everyone needs to work together — building on our proven barn-raising approach that includes all orders of government, the private sector, not-for-profit, educational institutions, and most importantly, all Kitchener residents to help build a stronger Kitchener and a stronger Ontario,” Mayor Berry Vrbanovic said in a release.
“Although the Province’s housing forecasts for municipalities are ambitious, Kitchener is well-positioned to meet these targets thanks to the proactive work we have done and our strong collaboration with partners.”
Stevenson said the city has already undertaken much of the needed work, such as increasing efficiency in handling development applications, waiving fees for affordable housing projects, and allowing additional dwelling units including tiny homes.
“As a result, in the last 10 years, we’ve approved 22,657 units,” Stevenson said. “We are setting the stage for more housing.”
Other actions outlined in the housing pledge include updating planning policies around Major Transit Station Areas where intensification is intended, encouraging “missing middle” housing, reviewing city-owned properties for potential use, and working with post-secondary institutions to expand the talent pool needed to build these homes.
However, a staff report notes a municipality can only do so much.
“The private sector is needed to build market housing in Ontario and municipalities cannot require private development to proceed.”
Coun. Debbie Chapman noted that council approval of a development doesn’t guarantee its construction.
“What if they don’t get built?” she asked. “Are we just bowing to a request from the provincial government that we don’t really have full control over?”
Stevenson said the pledge addresses actions a municipality can take to encourage and accommodate growth.
“We’re agreeing to not be the bottleneck in this process,” Coun. Scott Davey said.
Addressing the pledge’s commitment to collaborate, Chapman said the city needs to ensure residents are engaged and are also part of a “predictable” planning process.
She referred to a presentation earlier in the meeting in which representatives of a trio of community groups expressed concerns about the development process.
“It’s important to emphasize that we support development and know the city will grow and change,” Peggy Nickels said during that presentation.
However, she pointed out problems such as the relative lack of affordable housing and family-sized units being included in downtown developments, and noted “massive deviations” from existing planning and zoning regulations in many applications.
“We believe that official planning documents are a contract with the community, and that predictable planning is a reasonable expectation,” Nickels said. “Major departures undermine citizen trust.”
Nickels said residents want “meaningful engagement” earlier in the planning process for new developments as the city grows.
“We need to take the long view, and not just build what’s convenient or profitable now.”
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WATERLOO REGION — As the initial shock of the COVID-19 pandemic subsided and people realized the disease wasn’t going away any time soon, Jamie Adam’s phone began ringing off the hook.
It was the summer of 2020, and a short-lived slowdown when the crisis first struck had been replaced by a huge surge in demand for the services of Adam’s residential renovation company, Pioneer Craftsmen.
“For my own business, truthfully, we were one of the lucky ones,” said Adam, president of the third-generation, family-owned Kitchener firm.
With many homes being pressed into service as offices and classrooms, people were looking to create individual spaces that would meet their family’s needs, Adam said.
In troubling times, “people always like to cocoon,” he said. “Their home is their safe place to go.” Those with the means to invest in their properties wanted to “really make it a place they can enjoy.”
It was a similar story for Waterloo’s Imagine Fiberglass Pools, which sells and installs swimming pools manufactured by an affiliated company.
“There was a point that if I left the building, I’d come back and there would be four or five messages,” said co-owner Melissa Lehman. “There was overwhelming demand for a period of time.”
Like Adam, Lehman said her customers were looking to create an escape at their own homes, if they couldn’t easily travel or get together with friends.
“I’m going to do something in my home to keep us happy, keep us entertained,” Lehman said of that approach. “It was something to look forward to, for a lot of people.”
Supply chain challenges across many sectors didn’t help to ease demand-driven delays.
“From 2020, we ran into 2021 and in 2021, we ran into 2022,” Lehman said. “As a manufacturer, we’re limited to how many (pools) we could actually produce. We definitely maxed out what we could put in in a year.”
Both Lehman and Adam added staff — not an easy task, Adam said, given a shortage of skilled tradespeople that predated the pandemic.
For those looking to buy a home, dirt-cheap interest rates — the Bank of Canada lowered its policy rate to 0.25 per cent in an effort to stimulate economic activity at the start of the pandemic — and an existing lack of inventory fuelled a real estate frenzy that peaked in February 2022.
“It was kind of a perfect storm,” said Waterloo Region Association of Realtors president Megan Bell.
“We were very fast-paced from about 2017 on,” she said. The pandemic “kind of accelerated things a little bit faster.”
With local demand already outpacing the relatively low number of listings available, realtors also saw increasing interest from buyers heading west from the Greater Toronto Area.
With cash in hand from the sale of properties in the pricier GTA and remote work offering many people more flexibility in where they lived, out-of-town buyers went head-to-head with locals in a highly competitive market.
“We saw a lot of our own clients move out to the outskirts,” Bell said — places like London and Woodstock, where buyers from Waterloo Region could get more for their money.
Bidding wars became commonplace in the overheated market; typical sale conditions like home inspections and financing went out the window.
Seasoned buyers tended to keep their budgets a bit more conservative, Bell said, correctly predicting the low rates wouldn’t last forever.
“A lot of the buyers, especially if they were first-time homebuyers, didn’t quite think that the rates would go up the way that they did.”
As house prices and inflation soared — with overall average house prices in Waterloo Region passing the million-dollar mark for the first time just over a year ago — the Bank of Canada embarked on a series of interest rate hikes that have brought sale prices down but made it more costly to own a home.
The speed at which rates went up, to the current policy rate of 4.5 per cent, even took many in the real estate business by surprise, Bell said. Some potential buyers stopped looking, depressing demand and prices.
As of last month, the overall average price for all property types in the region was down about 25 per cent from its peak, from $1,012,930, to $758,698.
A belief that interest rates may start to come down by the end of the year could help to get some prospective buyers off the sidelines.
“I’ll be interested to see what March (results are) compared to February,” Bell said.
As for the home improvement sector, both Adam and Lehman said things are becoming more manageable.
Construction costs have risen along with interest rates, prompting some people to scale back their projects, Adam said.
One thing that hasn’t faded in the three years since the pandemic began, Adam believes, is a renewed appreciation of the importance of home.
“I think there was a significant change in the way people value their homes,” he said.
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GOTHENBURG, Sweden, March 20, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Used by thousands of estate agencies around the world, Adfenix has long been known for its high-performing social media advertising campaigns and lead-generation capabilities.
In acquiring customer data company Quedro and media management company Brandkeeper over the last 18 months, Adfenix made it clear that it had ambitions beyond social media advertising.
The new Realforce product universe is engineered to provide support to the underappreciated marketing team, tasked with supporting estate agents with their marketing needs.
Organised, automated, AI-powered and data-backed, Realforce puts the power in the hands of the marketers to provide first-class marketing solutions at scale, through software.
Realforce co-founder and CEO, André Hegge, said, “We witnessed, first-hand, the challenges faced by agents equipped with marketing tools that took them away from their skill set. Our goal was to stay focused on delivering the best of breed in advertising, customer data, and brand management, but specifically for estate agency marketing teams.
As a name, Adfenix could no longer represent what the platform now makes possible. Realforce will enable one marketer to support an entire team of estate agents, with a concierge marketing service, delivered at scale through software.”
Carl-Fredrik Mandrapa Olsson, Realforce VP Strategy, added, “What the team have created is not only a first-of-its-kind tech stack designed solely for the property industry, but also a product universe that plays well with existing software. The platform fills the gaps in our partners’ existing technology, in a collaborative way, rather than overpowering.”
For many though, the true appeal of Realforce will lie in the combined power of the components within; promising a comprehensive service that is engineered for the property industry, to drive business, profitability, market share and agent retention.
To learn more about Realforce, visit www.realforce.com
About Adfenix
Adfenix (www.adfenix.com) delivers a best-in-class, data-backed and full-service marketing operations platform that is trusted by many of the world’s largest real estate brands. Using smart, automated and AI-enhanced technology, Adfenix untangles the complexity of the Real Estate industry, enabling customers to create value for their brand and agents.
Founded in Sweden in 2014 by co-founders André Hegge and Gabriel Kamienny, today Adfenix works with real estate professionals around the world, with 85 employees from 4 continents, and offices in Stockholm, Gothenburg, San Francisco and London.
Her name is on the door at one of Australia’s biggest architectural firms. But it’s in another pocket of property that Zahava Elenberg has really made her mark.
Elenberg is turning 50 this year and the highly successful business that she “kind of fell into” turns 21. But the architect-turned designer pulls no punches. She says it is a privilege to age and she intends on celebrating the milestone.
She founded Elenberg Fraser in 1998 with Callum Fraser at the tender age of 24, but says moving into the furniture, fixtures and equipment (FF&E) space was where she found her niche.
In 2002 she and a friend were asked to do a furniture fitout of a project in Docklands back when it was “emerging out of the scum of the Yarra”.
“The budget they gave us was ridiculous, there was no way we could do a fitout with that. But I like a challenge,” she says.
From that experience the seed of an idea germinated and Move-in was born. Elenberg says it is impossible to count how many spaces they have fitted out over the years but says it’s “tens of thousands” of apartments, about 5000 student accommodation rooms, ski resorts in New Zealand and hotels all around the world.
▲ The purpose-built student accommodation sector has invested heavily in furniture fitouts and art in communal spaces to level up the lived experience for students. PHOTO: Lisa Cohen
The FF&E business was the first of its kind, with a focus on Australian-made products, good design, and a vision for shaping the world we live in.
“If you tip a building upside down and shake out all the things we put inside them, they’re what makes the lived experience. Nobody notices if you use a cheaper paint or a lesser tap fitting. But if you put an uncomfortable bed in a hotel that will be remembered.
“When I started the business, nobody knew what FF&E was. It’s a specialist area like any consultancy but it dictates the way a place feels. It’s not just about putting products in a room and ordering 20 TVs. It’s that emotional connection you have with a space or a place. We straddle that place between design and commercial reality.
“It’s a comprehensive end-to-end solution for design, manufacturing, procurement and logistics, and we don’t want it to be an afterthought that is value-managed out of a project. It is critical.”
Elenberg says in the beginning they would design and make furniture and fittings and provide furniture packages but they have moved away from that now.
“In our early days we were working with developers managing their risk to fit out fully furnished apartments. They would get better yields having fully furnished properties.
“Over time we just moved with the market.”
Moving with the times included major hotel fitouts across Asia, including Vietnam and Malaysia, and the establishment of an office in the Middle East, which closed in 2008 as Elenberg juggled motherhood and a multi-national business.
▲ Move-in has been very active in the hotel space internationally and recently completed the FF&E for Sebel Silverwoods. PHOTO: Cox Architecture
While Australian projects across the eastern seaboard are the major focus for Move-in now, Elenberg says it’s “extraordinary” what she and her small team based in Melbourne’s Fitzroy are achieving.
Elenberg’s team includes designers and logistics experts, which she believes sets them apart from others in the burgeoning industry.
Circular economy is something that is on Elenberg’s radar as she looks to the future of the industry. Move-in recently inked a deal with You Matter, a support service, which helps to fit out properties for women fleeing domestic violence.
Elenberg says they strategically over-order for projects and the surplus sits in a warehouse until warranty is done. She says this program enables them to divert products from landfill.
“There’s lots of people out there in need and then there’s lots of land fill,” she says.
“Circular economy is something that we are constantly thinking about in our space. We just donated nearly 400 products at the beginning of this year.”
They also look to adopt products that can have a second life when they cycle out of hotels and other spaces.
“We try to choose high-quality products so we know where they have come from and how they can have a second life, whether that’s through recycling or repurposing,” she says.
“We like to give our clients the option to buy locally and there has been a shift towards it because the prices of products have increased and the shipping costs have blown out significantly.
“Even if it’s not everything, but a few pieces, it is supporting local manufacturers and businesses.”
▲ The build-to-rent sector is emerging as a growth area for the FF&E industry according to Elenberg. Move-in completed the fit out of Home Richmond (pictured). PHOTO: RotheLowman
Elenberg says the purpose-built student accommodation developers were the most proactive in supporting local designers and sustainability initiatives.
“It’s a really interesting market, they’re game-changing leaders in that space. They have a big focus on design and fit out of big communal spaces in their developments and are commissioning artists to create pieces for their developments.
“The common spaces and areas are where life happens and there’s a lot of thought that goes into that. No longer are they cheaply priced prison cells.”
Elenberg says the blossoming build-to-rent market was a growth area for Move-in and also had a vested interest in quality fit outs.
Reflecting on 21 years of business Elenberg says while the colour schemes and fashions have shifted significantly, the drive to create beautiful, liveable spaces and help developers to bring their vision to life was what continued to drive her.
“I want Move-in to be synonymous with great FF&E and amazing spaces.”
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HOUSE PRICES in Finland continued to slide in January.
Statistics Finland on Thursday released preliminary data indicating that the prices of old dwellings in housing companies dropped by 5.3 per cent year-on-year and 2.4 per cent month-on-month in January. The year-on-year drop stood at 5.5 per cent in the six largest cities and at 4.8 per cent in other localities across the country.
Out of the largest cities in Finland, the prices fell the most in Oulu, Helsinki and Vantaa, and the least in Tampere and Turku.
“The decline in house prices continued, as expected, in January. The decline has now wiped out the gains made during the coronavirus pandemic, and the decline is likely to continue in the coming months,” tweeted Joona Widgrén, an economist at OP Financial Group.
Widgrén on Thursday revealed in a blog entry that house prices fell slightly faster than expected by the largest mortgage lender in Finland.
“This was the weakest month in both the capital region and entire country in terms of sales volume in statistics dating back to 2015. House sales have continued sluggishly. Of course you should bear in mind that January is typically the weakest month [of the year] for house sales,” he wrote according to Helsingin Sanomat.
Also Nordea and the Bank of Finland commented last week on the real estate market.
The Bank of Finland reported last week that the value of new housing loan drawdowns added up to 847 million euros in January, its lowest monthly total in 20 years. Juho Kostiainen, an economist at Nordea, revealed that the financial services provider expects house prices to fall 10 per cent from the peak observed last year before returning to an upward trajectory.
Underlying the slowdown are general uncertainty and the surge in reference rates. The 12-month Euribor, the most common reference rate for housing loans in Finland, is expected to climb by another 0.2 percentage points to roughly four per cent by mid-2023.
Widgrén on Thursday pointed out that the sliding prices can create a cycle where buyers expecting the downward trend to continue end up prolonging the slump.
OP does not expect the market to pick up significantly in the near future.
Widgrén confirmed that it will take time for house prices to return to growth path: “There may be some modest rejuvenation as the worst fears of a crisis winter abate and uncertainty about interest rate rises dissipates. We will likely have to wait for a clearer turnaround until the we have adapted to the rise in interest rates, wages have increased and compensated for inflation, and the economic outlook has begun to brighten.”
A repeat of the pandemic-induced boom is not on the horizon, though.
“Sales volumes will return to their normal levels gradually, without a particularly significant or sudden rebound. This normal does not mean the figures of 2020 and 2021, but I think we will rather return to the level preceding them,” wrote Widgrén.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
JLLs Hotels & Hospitality Group announced today that it has closed the sale of two Marriott brand hotels totaling 372 keys along the Hudson River in Weehawken, New Jersey.
JLL represented the seller, Veris Residential, in the all-equity sale to Navika Capital Group, LLC. The hotels were offered unencumbered by management.
The portfolio includes the 208-key EnVue Autograph Collection Port Imperial and the 164-key Residence Inn Port Imperial. The hotels, which opened in 2019 and 2018, respectively, operate under one building complex at the center of the $4 billion mixed-use development that is in the final phases at Port Imperial. The property features a collective 15,000 square feet of outdoor space, over 27,000 square feet of meeting and conference space, a fully equipped fitness center and unobstructed views of the New York City Skyline.
Situated along the Hudson River and located immediately adjacent to the Port Imperial Ferry Terminal, the hotels provide guests with seamless access to Manhattan via the NY Waterways ferry, which provides regular service to the West 39th Street Ferry Terminal in Midtown Manhattan and the Brookfield Place and Pier 11 Terminals in downtown Manhattan. As a result of this connectivity, guests can easily visit New Yorks biggest attractions, including Hudson Yard, The High Line, Penn Station, Wall Street, The Battery, New York City Hall, The One World Trade Center and more. Furthermore, the hotel is proximate to Newark Liberty International Airport which is the 12th busiest airport in the U.S.
JLLs Hotels & Hospitality Group has completed more transactions than any other hotels and hospitality real estate advisor over the last five years, totaling $83 billion worldwide. The groups 350-strong global team in over 20 countries also closed more than 7,350 advisory, valuation and asset management assignments. Our hotel valuation, brokerage, asset management and consultancy services have helped more hotel investors, owners and operators achieve high returns on their assets than any other real estate advisor in the world.
For more news, videos and research resources on JLL, please visit our newsroom.
About JLL
JLL (NYSE: JLL) is a leading professional services firm that specializes in real estate and investment management. JLL shapes the future of real estate for a better world by using the most advanced technology to create rewarding opportunities, amazing spaces and sustainable real estate solutions for our clients, our people and our communities. JLL is a Fortune 500 company with annual revenue of $19.4 billion, operations in over 80 countries and a global workforce of more than 102,000 as of September 30, 2022. JLL is the brand name, and a registered trademark, of Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated. For further information, visit jll.com.
About Veris Residential
Veris Residential, Inc. is a forward-thinking, environmentally- and socially-conscious real estate investment trust (REIT) that primarily owns, operates, acquires and develops holistically-inspired, Class A multifamily properties that meet the sustainability-conscious lifestyle needs of todays residents while seeking to positively impact the communities it serves and the planet at large. The company is guided by an experienced management team and Board of Directors and is underpinned by leading corporate governance principles, a best-in-class and sustainable approach to operations, and an inclusive culture based on equality and meritocratic empowerment. For additional information on Veris Residential, Inc. and our properties available for lease, please visit verisresidential.com.
About Navika Capital Group, LLC
Navika Capital Group LLC operates as a real estate company. The company offers real estate investment and development services for hotels, office buildings, shopping centers and multi-family housing across the nation.
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Ruchika Sethia bought her second house in Ahmedabad —a city she is convinced will yield high returns on real estate.
Her parents stay in the city, property is cheaper and purchasing a second house there makes financial and emotional sense, Sethia says. Besides, she has heard of some of her friends liquidate their real estate investments for a profit, in a short span of having invested.
Annual demand in the Ahmedabad residential and office market grew 58% and 88%, respectively, year-on-year in 2022, considerably higher than the national averages, according to Vivek Rathi, director, research, at Knight Frank India Pvt.
High affordability, comparatively lower prices per square foot and an improving local economic environment remain compelling drivers for the Ahmedabad residential real estate market.
Ahmedabad is one of the smallest real estate markets in India among the eight cities that Knight Frank tracks. It is recovering well from the pandemic lows, Rathi said.
He underscored that the office market scaled a historic high of 2.2 million square feet, while the residential market at just over 14,000 units of sales is very close to the levels seen before the pandemic.
The fact that Ahmedabad has experienced heightened traction in a less-than-ideal economic environment shows the improving stature of its market, according to Rathi.
The dedicated push by the state and central governments to make it an economic hub, low real estate costs and abundant connectivity infrastructure within the city make it an attractive real-estate destination for a homebuyer or office occupier.
Ahmedabad is predominantly an affordable real estate market among all the top eight cities of the country, said Santhosh Kumar, vice chairperson at Anarock Property Consultant Pvt.
Rapid industrialisation, proposed infrastructure development, good connectivity, GIFT city—one of the first smart cities in the country—and expressways are major factors spearheading realty growth in Ahmedabad over the last few years, particularly affordable housing.
Ahmedabad also emerged as one of the favorites for property investment among the tier two and three cities in a consumer-sentiment survey by the company, Kumar said.
The city has seen the new launch supply of approximately 20,000 new units in 2022, according to an Anarock research.
Out of this total new supply, nearly 57% is within the affordable category and priced within a budget of Rs 40 lakh, followed by 27% in the mid segment that is priced within Rs 40–80 lakh, 10% in the premium segment between Rs 80 lakh to Rs 1.5 crore and the remaining 6% within the luxury segment priced at over Rs 1.5 crore.
Not just Ahmedabad, but cities like Coimbatore, Indore, Jaipur, Surat, Visakhapatnam, besides Goa are all all evolving fast in real estate, said Ritesh Mehta, senior director and head for west and north—residential services and developer Initiatives—at Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.
While improving infrastructure and connectivity are aiding real estate growth across these cities along with opportunities for growth, each of these have different drivers of growth, he said.
In Surat for instance, there is a huge demand for luxury residential real estate, driven by factors like accessibility to Mumbai and the upcoming Diamond Bourse. People are moving back to native towns like Coimbatore and Indore, which are seeing an uptick in job opportunities , along with good health infrastructure.
The government’s affordable housing projects, subsidies to manufacturing zones in some of these cities and rising job creation is also driving growth across these cities, Mehta said.
The key, of course, remains affordability, he said.
Rent control in Queensland could have a very different impact on the market than intended, according to the Real Estate Institute of Queensland.
The institute’s chief executive Antonia Mercorella said such a policy could in fact make the situation worse.
“We are acutely aware of the devastating impacts of the rental crisis and against that backdrop, it’s understandable that some tenants’ advocates are proposing rent control as a solution but rent control is not the panacea that many argue it to be,” Mercorella said.
“Rent control is a short-sighted solution to a complex problem and could in fact significantly deter property investment and reduce rental supply at a time when we’re already in a rental crisis.”
Concerns around housing affordability, availability and the cost of living have prompted calls for a rent-control policy in Queensland.
Calls for rent increases to be tied to inflation plus 10 per cent and limited to once a year were made last week by advocacy groups Tenants Queensland and the Queensland Council of Social Services.
It means asking the state government to intervene in the private rental market.
Median rents have risen 80 per cent at Gladstone, 51 per cent at Noosa and 33 per cent on the Gold Coast since 2018 with Brisbane’s house and unit rents increasing by 33 per cent and 23 per cent respectively prior to the pandemic.
The data is tracked quarterly by the Residential Tenancies Authority in Queensland.
“Unless we limit rent increases, hardworking Queensland renters will continue to be put at risk of homelessness and subjected to opportunistic rent increases in a hot market,” Tenants Queensland chief executive Penny Carr said, estimating that 30 per cent of renters would be protected by a rent control policy.
Mercorella is concerned rent control will mean property investors will not have the ability to pay their own bills with their rental income limited, potentially scaring investors off the market and limiting the already diminished rental supply further.
“It’s unsustainable to assume property investors will keep meeting free-market-driven cost increases such as mortgage repayments, rates, repairs and maintenance, and insurance, while artificially capped rents create a hard limit on their return to cover such expenses,” Mercorella said.
“Given regular mum and dad property investors provide the vast majority of housing for our state’s rental community, with the government’s social housing supply program accounting for under 4 per cent, it needs to be recognised that the contribution of property investors to housing Queenslanders is vital.
“If even a small percentage of investors were to sell their properties or withdraw them from the permanent rental market, this would have a material impact on the Queensland rental sector.”
▲ Rents across Queensland have increased significantly since the pandemic began with the amount of rental housing available slowly declining.
Mercorella said the state government needed to intervene to address the housing supply issue.
“This is not a problem that has emerged overnight and while Covid has had a role to play, the number of dwellings being built in Queensland has diminished considerably over the last five years and our future pipeline is also likely to fall short of demand,” she said.
“Until we are able to achieve a greater balance between the demand for rental housing and supply, and introduce greater diversity of housing, we won’t be able to fix this critical problem we are facing.
“What’s needed is a concerted effort from all levels of government to create the right environment to sustain existing established rental stock and to build new housing each year that matches targets based on detailed population forecasts.”
The rental housing crisis has hit people hard with an Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute report finding that renters are 125 per cent more likely to enter housing stress than homeowners.
It also found that renters are less likely to recover from it within the first year with a probability of doing so at only 39.4 per cent.
“Renting is much more insecure than homeownership,” UNSW’s City Futures Research Centre deputy director, Hazel Easthorpe, said.
“It’s a particularly insecure tenure in Australia, more so than in many other countries, because of our limited protections for renters, including allowing no-grounds terminations and unlimited rent increases.”
Housing stress occurs when a person in the bottom 40 per cent of income distribution is spending more than 30 per cent of their before-tax income on housing, something that is more likely to occur as the cost of living increases.
In 2021, the Mt Hotham snow season lasted just four days.
“We knew we were done,” Mt Hotham’s chamber of commerce president Steve Belli said. “So we just shut up shop and rode it out.”
This, after trading lasted just two days in 2020.
But while the issue then was Covid and the restrictions around the pandemic, a different, albeit related, issue is threatening this season—key worker housing.
“There are businesses this year that cannot find a single bed for their staff,” Belli said.
“Existing shortfalls were made worse by Covid because people sold property as other people moved into the area to isolate because the rules weren’t as severe as they were in Melbourne.
“So they bought here and those properties came out of the long-term rental market.”
It means key worker accommodation options are now restricted to short-term rentals as the returns are greater. For businesses looking for workers across months not weeks, finding suitable, affordable accommodation for staff is becoming mission impossible.
But there is a glimmer of hope for the snowfield town with Altiset Property, the alpine development arm of Melbourne’s Grollo family, buying the Mt Hotham airport and indicating that it wants to build key worker housing on part of the 105ha site.
US mountain resort company Vail Resorts sold the airport to Altiset for $6.75 million. The Colorado-based Vail built the airport in 1999 for $17.5 million.
The airport component of the site is just 40ha, crucially leaving a considerable parcel of flat land around it for development, a rarity in the area.
▲ Vail Resorts bought the Mt Hotham and Falls Creek resorts for $174 million in 2019.
The Alpine Shire is looking at other answers to the shortages, but it may take some time.
“We’re looking at industrial-zoned areas being rezoned to allow accommodation for staff, but it’s not going to happen this season,” Belli said.
“So it was very welcome news when we heard that Grollo was going to look at putting some staff accommodation down there.”
Vail Resorts said it was keen to sell the site to a buyer with experience in alpine development and business.
“The plans Altiset Property has for environmentally sustainable multi-function key worker and affordable group housing opportunities is another first of its kind in the Victorian Alpine Region,” Vail Resorts’ Mount Hotham Skiing Company general manager, Nathan Butterworth, said.
▲ The rarity of developable land in the alps means such sites are hotly contested.
Grollo has development projects at Mt Hotham, including a four-chalet project and several residential and hotel projects at Mt Buller.
It also has other hotel and ski operations and infrastructure assets under its family group.
While some businesses already have their own worker accommodation, others are taking matters into their own hands.
“Some businesses have actually bought existing lodges to meet their requirement,” Belli said.
“This is a good Band-Aid fix but not a good long-term fix because it takes beds out of the tourist market … so it has a consequence at a later stage.
“But there’s no other choice at this point and that is what’s driving these businessed to buy their own properties to house their staff.”
Grollo has indicated that designing and planning the key worker accommodation village will cost around $1 million and could take up to two years.
▲ Hotham Airport is the highest commercial airport in Australia.
At 1298m above sea level, Hotham Airport is Australia’s highest commercial airport and that makes building a challenge at the best of times, let alone as the construction faces rising costs and workforce shortages.
“It is more expensive to build up here anyway,” Belli said.
“Transport costs are higher and you’ve also got fire ratings and other ratings costs as well.
“And just generally, as we all know, the cost of living has gone up and the cost of goods and materials are all pretty expensive now, so building costs have gone up exponentially.”
While Mt Hotham had a record season in 2022, this coming season could well be a struggle.
Last year until mid-July, Mt Hotham’s visitor numbers had reached 76,800, more than double the 10-year average of 31,594, with visitor days also more than doubling the 10-year average of 85,031 with 188,386.
“A lot of those people had properties up there or were members of clubs,” Belli said.
“They couldn’t get up there for two years so there was pent-up demand.”
Belli said that the issue was not restricted to Mt Hotham but rather was widespread.
“It’s not just unique to resorts; most tourist towns in Australia have some sort of similar issues,” he said.
“But it’s just the resorts are really down to zero available accommodation.”
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