澳洲人的新梦想 拥有一套公寓房
It’s the new Australian dream: own an apartment
AFR
16 June 2011
Apartments are on course to overtake houses as the most common new homes in Australia’s biggest cities as young buyers and renters forgo the traditional backyard for tight living spaces in the inner suburbs.
The apartment building pipeline is swelling.
In the 1990s there were 3 houses approved for every 1 apartment.
In April 2011 there were only 1.6 houses for every apartment.
Home building figures released on 15 June 2011 show a continuing downturn in detached houses, and 36% increase in apartment and town house volumes over the past 12 months.
Property analysts say preferences are shifting away from the terrace house towards a home in an apartment block, helped along by rising prices in former working class inner city suburbs.
Greater care and creativity is going into apartment design.
Poor affordability and the lack of choice are driving factors, but they are not the only reason that people are choosing apartments over houses. Broader demographic shifts are at play.
There has been a steady decrease for decades in the number of people per dwelling. The most recent figures in the 2006 census showed there were 2.46 people per home, compared with 3.24 people 40 years ago. Single-person households, one-parent families and couples without children were increasing, according to the census.
Figures by RP Data-Rismark show the capital growth of units has outpaces houses for the past 5 years. In the 12 months to April 2011, unit values increased by 0.1% while the value of houses fell by 2%. Prices in Sydney rose 2.9% in the past 12 months.
In terms of volume, Melbourne and Canberra are booming. In Melbourne there were more than 20,000 high and medium-rise apartments approved in the past 2 years. In Canberra there were more apartments approved in 2010 than in Adelaide, a city 4 times its size.
The number of Sydney apartments being built has largely traced sideways for the past 2 decades, with developers blaming long planning delays. Even so, 41% of homes approved in Sydney over past 3 years were detached houses. The rest were apartments and townhouses.
There has been some sign of turnaround in Sydney. After 5 years of little price growth, a boost in values over the past 2 years gave developers the confidence to proceed with new projects. Stamp duty exemptions for off-the-plan sales below $600,000 have boosted demand. Apartment approvals are trending up, although from low levels.
There is a widely held belief that if more construction-friendly planning laws are passed, Sydney’s pent-up demand could drive a building boom.
This demand is illustrated when new projects come to the market. Australand last week announced it had sold 102 out of 126 apartments off-the-plan at Linc at Wolli Creek. More than 80% of total sales were achieved within 24 hours of the release.
But there is still a long way to go before apartments become the choice of most Australians. In the 2006 census, 22.5% of households were living in medium or high-density housing. The apartment building phenomenon is mostly on the east coast in the cities. Nationwide, 76% of the approvals in the past 3 years were for houses, and in Perth it was 80%.
With some notable exceptions, apartment developers have yet to crack the owner-occupier market. They are mostly bought by investors and occupied by renters.
Apartment owners cannot access solar schemes like feed-in tariffs or solar panel installation rebates; nor do they get government-paid aerial upgrades as part of the shift to digital television.
They pay GST on water while house owners don’t. After the Brisbane floods, hundreds of flood-damaged apartment buildings were refused insurance payouts as well as government assistance payments handed to businesses and house owners.
There are also issues with owners winning compensation from developers that build apartments with defects, as well as the use of proxies by developers to exert disproportionate influence on the governance of individual buildings.
As the up-and-coming apartment generation gets older, the question is what will the next phase of their Australian dream look like? Will they seek a house with a garden to raise their children, or will it become more acceptable to raise kids in an apartment?
Smaller view drivers building surge
A surge of apartment building is taking place while houses are on the decline, according to dwelling commencement figures by ABS.
Apartment and townhouse starts increased nationally by 14.7% in the March quarter, contributing to 36% increase over the past 12 months.
However, detached home starts fell 1.9% to be 18.2% lower than 1 year ago.
Victoria was the most active state with 5168 private sector apartments started in the March quarter, the 2nd highest on record. The private sector has started building 33453 apartments nationwide since the upturn began in June 2008.
Dr Andrew Wilson from APM said he was concerned Victoria was building too many units after 5 successive quarters where more than 4000 apartments were commenced. In the history of the series there has only been 1 or 2 quarters ever that have just scrapped past 4000.
Total dwelling starts for the quarter rose 7.7% in NSW and 1.8% in Victoria. The biggest percentage increase was in disaster-hit Queensland, where there was a 12.8% rise compared with a nationwide 3.1% increase.
However, there was 4.5% fall in WA and a 2.9% fall in SA.
Stamp Duty on a home value of $400,000
Victoria
$16,370
SA
$16,330
NSW
$13,490
WA
$13,015
QLD
$11,825 |
发表于 8-6-2011 16:16:50
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