House prices never fall very much in Australia.
Even in the recessions of 1982 and 1991 they only fell 6.2 per cent, and in the past 50 years the national median price has only fallen more than 10 per cent once — 10.2 per cent after the APRA crackdown on lending to property investors in 2017, which says a lot.
We’re going backwards. It is now more than two years since Australia’s governments, federal and state, met to do something about this crisis, and launched the National Housing Accord.
To meet the 1.2 million target, there had to be 20,000 dwellings approved each month in Australia for five years from mid-2024. In the 12 months before the 2022 meeting there were about 15,000 approvals per month, so that was about 5,000 short, requiring a 33 per cent increase.
Last week, we got approvals for December 2024: 15,174, seasonally adjusted, still 5,000 short of the rate required. The number of housing approvals has declined, not increased!
