Anthony Albanese’s promise to cut immigration from record levels looks increasingly hollow amid a housing crisis.
445,600 migrants poured into Australia last financial year.
This was 50,600 higher than the forecast of 395,000 for 2023-2024 in the May budget documents.
The difference between what the Treasury has forecast and the number arriving is almost equal to that of a major regional center like Albury, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data released this week.
SQM Research director Louis Christopher said renters were likely to continue to suffer next year, with immigration falling from last year’s record high above 500,000.
“Another year of rapidly growing population, compared to our slow pace of construction, will keep pressure on renters going into 2025,” he said.
Mr Christopher said the increase in rental vacancies, compared to a year ago, has more to do with an increasing number of people living in shared accommodation, rather than an increase in the number of new homes.
“While we still have rental shortages in our two largest capitals, the situation has clearly improved between the very difficult days of 2021 and 2023,” he said.
Anthony Albanese’s promise to cut immigration from record levels looks increasingly hollow amid a housing crisis
‘I think this is mainly because the number of users per building is increasing.
“The sky-high rents have forced many to make compromises in their living situations.”
Australia’s most overcrowded cities, Sydney and Melbourne, also continue to receive a larger share of new foreign arrivals.
NSW took in 142,473 migrants, on a net basis, taking into account departures abroad, ahead of Victoria’s influx of 132,859.
Both states together hosted 62 percent of Australia’s 445,600 new overseas residents who arrived in the last financial year.
When Queensland’s 74,932 residents were added to the mix, Australia’s three largest states on the east coast housed 78.4 percent of the new immigrants.
This is also happening amid a housing crisis that has led to double-digit annual rental price increases in some cities.
The large overseas influx to Sydney has led to an exodus of local residents to other states, where vacancy rates are already very tight.
445,600 migrants poured into Australia last financial year. This was 50,600 higher than the 2023-2024 forecast of 395,000 in the May budget documents (pictured is Sydney’s Pitt Street shopping centre)
Queensland welcomed 29,910 new residents from other states in the last financial year, while 30,865 people left New South Wales to escape Sydney’s unaffordable housing.
Brisbane’s rental vacancy rate was 1.1 per cent last month, or a level below the national average of 1.4 per cent, new data from SQM Research shows.
But Perth was an even worse place for renters with an extremely tight rental vacancy rate of 0.6 percent – the tightest in Australia.
Western Australia also had the strongest population growth in the country at 2.8 percent, as 9,742 new residents arrived via interstate, on top of 58,082 from overseas.
The national annual population growth rate of 2.1 percent marked a moderation from the 2.5 percent level at the end of 2023.
This was the highest since the early 1950s, when a record 548,800 migrants were still flowing into Australia each year.
The natural increase, or births minus deaths, of 106,400 represented just 19 percent of Australia’s annual population growth of 552,000 in 2023-2024, with the rest coming from immigration.