FLAT CHAT WRAP
All about living in apartments (condos), from dealing with your committee to getting on with neighbours and – a dose of healthy skepticism about dubious developers. Please subscribe by clicking on one of the icons below, to take you to your favourite podcaster.
FLAT CHAT WRAP
All the strata stats that matter
Did you know that getting on for 4.5 million Australians live in strata? And who do you think comprises the single largest demographic group, from singles and couples through to one-parent families?
Can you even take a wild guess at the total value of strata properties in Oz, or what percentage of strata schemes don’t have strata managers?
This week we take a deep dive into the latest Australasian (it includes NZ) Strata Insights report from UNSW and SCA.
By the way, we got ourselves into a bit of a fankle over the Nepali language, which we mispronounced “nepawlee” rathere than “nepa-ly”, and which we partially correctly said was Nepalese – as in, the official language of Nepal.
In fact, Nepali is spoken by more than up to 20 million people, mostly in Nepal and neighbouring parts of India. Smaller speech communities exist in Bhutan, Brunei, and Myanmar. And in Melbourne too, it seems.
We also take a quick check on what the various political parties are offering by way of tackling the housing crisis and we talk briefly about why it’s such a surprise to see one of our apartment developer giants exposed in the news.
That’s all in this week’s Flat Chat Wrap.
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Flat Chat is all about apartment living, especially in Australia.
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Recorded by Jimmy Thomson & Sue Williams; Transcribed by Otter.ai.
Find out more about Sue Williams and Jimmy Thomson on their websites.
Jimmy
Do you think we're going to sound more relaxed today?
Sue
We should do, shouldn't we?
Jimmy
Really. We should. We're at the Elysia Resort in the Hunter Valley.
Sue
Yes, it's a health retreat. Well, it's kind of half health retreat, half hotel, but we're in the health retreat.
Jimmy
But we're working.
Sue
Yes, of course we are. We never stop working.
Jimmy
But it's kind of like the White Lotus without all the violence.
Sue
And the glamour.
Jimmy
And the alcohol. But it's really good. It's really nice.
Sue
We're just doing workouts in the gym and doing a bit of meditation and having massages. And I had a very weird treatment today, which is called watsu, which is where you're in this warm hydrotherapy pool and a man kind of tugs you around by the hair and pulls you around through the water. Yes.
And it's really quite interesting and it's very relaxing.
Jimmy
Wow. Okay. Yeah, I might skip that one.
Well, today we are going to talk about the Strata Insights document produced by University of New South Wales, our friend Hazel Easthope and her colleagues and sponsored by SCA, that's the Strata Community Association, Strata Managers in other words. And we're going to talk about the government and the opposition's plans for housing. And just checking again on the stuff that's been written in the Herald about defects.
A lot to talk about again, even though we're relaxed, we're on the ball. I'm Jimmy Thomson. I edit the flatchat.com.au website.
Sue
And I'm Sue Williams and I write about property for Domain and the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age and the AFR.
Jimmy
And this is The Flat Chat Rap.
Sue Williams, I have a quiz question for you.
Sue
Yes.
Jimmy
Which area, state or territory in Australia has the highest percentage of people living in Strata?
Sue
Surely that would be Sydney.
Jimmy
You think New South Wales? Yes.
Sue
Unless it's Canberra, maybe.
Jimmy
It is.
Sue
It's the ACT, yeah. Oh, is it? Okay.
Jimmy
Oh, you jumped the gun on me there. Yes.
Sue
Sorry. I just suddenly thought, if it's not Sydney, where else do people live in apartments?
Jimmy
Sydney's only third.
Sue
Really? Who else beats it?
Jimmy
So the ACT is 22%. Victoria is...
Sue
18%.
Jimmy
18%. New South Wales is 17%. The next one up is Northern Territory.
Sue
Really?
Jimmy
That's 16%.
Sue
Wow, that's amazing. I suppose Darwin's had a lot of redevelopment lately.
Jimmy
Yeah, yeah.
Sue
And some of those other cities near there.
Jimmy
And Darwin's the kind of place that it's easier to go up than out, isn't it?
Sue
Yeah.
Jimmy
So yeah. So anyway, so we're looking at these statistics and I hope you're statistically minded, our listeners. But these are statistics, look, they're based on old data, but it's the most recent data.
And here's the general picture. In Australia, as of the last census, there were 2.5 million people living in private apartments and 1.7 million people living in other kinds of strata, like townhouses and things. 15% of Australian residents lived in strata.
Sue
That is incredible. I would never have thought it was 15%. I would never have realised it was that high.
The whole of the Australian population.
Jimmy
So that is made up from 368,000 strata schemes and 3.19 million lots or units.
Sue
Wow.
Jimmy
It's incredible. There's so many people living in strata.
Sue
I had no idea. I kind of thought there's an awful lot of people living in strata in central Sydney and an awful lot in some areas of Melbourne, but then I hadn't realised that it was quite so much everywhere.
Jimmy
Fewer than half of all the apartment residents in Australia were born in Australia. 47% of people living in strata are renters. 48% of people living in strata are between the ages of 20 and 39.
And more apartments households rent than are owner-occupied. It very clearly shows you this is a young population of predominantly renters, but for every renter, there's a landlord. There's an investor.
Although some investors will have many investors, will have multiple properties.
Sue
Sure. And often for those renters, they're looking at maybe one day buying their own apartment really, because they've been living in apartments, they're familiar with it. They know the ups and downs.
And maybe when they go for their first home, they'll want to buy an apartment really.
Jimmy
Here's the other breakdown. 39% of households in strata are single people. 25% are couples with no children.
12% are couples with children. And then it diminishes down to others. Single parents are only 6%.
8% are group households. So it's that lone person. It's a strange statistic, isn't it?
Sue
That went up hugely during COVID because people were nervous about sharing flats and stuff. So they all kind of moved into their own places.
Jimmy
Right.
Sue
Especially when rents were being subsidized or people were receiving some help with rents. So those lone person households went up enormously and it looks as if they're here to stay. It doesn't look as if people now are kind of deciding, I don't want to live on my own anymore.
I want to move in with friends or something.
Jimmy
Now here's another figure. 2,796 full-time strata managers and 3,656 other employees. This is according to SCA.
These are companies that manage 60% of the lots in Australia. Only 60% of the lot.
Sue
So what's happening with the other 40%?
Jimmy
Maybe they self-manage.
Sue
Wow.
Jimmy
I remember when we started writing about strata, people said that fewer than 50% of strata schemes had strata managers.
Sue
Yes.
Jimmy
Because they were much smaller schemes and people just kind of, you know, somebody would put a note through your door and say, you owe us X amount in levies. But as schemes got bigger, they needed strata managers.
Sue
Yeah. But also, aren't these just schemes that are members of the SCA?
Jimmy
Yeah.
Sue
So they could be strata managers who aren't members of the SCA.
Jimmy
Yes.
Sue
Who are outside their organization as well.
Jimmy
And yeah, that's an interesting statistic because the SCA, you know, they've been through a bit of a dodgy time recently. So, I mean, we used to always say to people, if your strata manager isn't a member of SCA, then get somebody who is. But that's kind of taken a bit of a dent recently, hasn't it?
Sue
That's right.
Jimmy
I'm sure it'll come back. I mean, there's mostly good people trying to do the right thing. So the area with the most people living in strata is the Australian Capital Territory, as you rightly said.
And there, there are 4,800 plus schemes and nearly 78,000 units.
Sue
When you say the most people, do you mean per head of population?
Jimmy
I mean the highest percentage. Yeah. Okay.
So 60,000 of them are private apartment residents, 41,000 plus live in other types of strata. A country of birth, 54% are Australian, 6% are Indian and 5% are Chinese. It's quite incredible, actually.
The language is spoken in apartments in the ACT. 59% English, 6% Mandarin, 4% Nepali or Nepalese, I would have called it, but there you go.
[Editor’s Note: Nepali is a language spoken by approaching 20 million people in Nepal, Northern India and elsewhere in the region]
So a big chunk of the population in Canberra lives in apartments. And I guess that's because it's a planned city, isn't it?
Sue
That's right. And lots of people work for government there.
Jimmy
Yes.
Sue
So what does that, why does that translate into living in apartments, really?
Jimmy
It means that the rules, the laws in the ACT regarding defects and things like that are much tougher than anywhere else in Australia.
Sue
So people feel more confident about moving into apartments there, perhaps?
Jimmy
Well, partly that, but I mean, the people who move into the apartments are professional people with political nous and political connections. And they are saying, you cannot just build a building that's going to fall down. Although they've had some pretty horrendous examples there of buildings that literally fell down and the owners, corporations and the owners were left to carry the can.
There's a scheme there that is actually worse than mascot towers, but didn't get the publicity because it was in the ACT and nobody cares. Now, Victoria is the second biggest. What are things looking like over there, Sue?
Sue
Yeah, there's 501,000 private apartment residents in Victoria and 770,000 residents in other dwelling towns, which is also Strata.
Jimmy
Like townhouses and things like that.
Sue
Yeah, that's right. So in total, 18% of Victorian residents live in Strata.
Jimmy
Right.
Sue
That's not inconsequential, is it? 18%?
Jimmy
No.
Sue
Yeah. So there's a total number of schemes, 128,000, nearly 129,000, and the total number of units, 1,044,000.
Jimmy
Right. And what kind of people live in apartments in Victoria? Is it just the same as everywhere else?
Sue
Actually, there's one other statistic that I thought was really interesting. In Victoria, the value of apartments is $471 billion. Wow.
That's a lot, isn't it? What is it in New South Wales?
Jimmy
I don't know. I've just thrown a piece of paper on the floor. I'm sorry.
Sue
This is a slick operation, isn't it, really? I just thought that was really interesting.
Jimmy
In Australia as a whole, it's $1.4 trillion.
Sue
Ooh, yep.
Jimmy
And in...
Sue
New South Wales?
Jimmy
New South Wales, $486 billion. What was the one for Victoria again? She's throwing it on the floor.
Sue
$471 billion.
Jimmy
Very similar. Ooh, so really close. But what does that tell you?
There's a lower percentage of people in New South Wales living in apartments, but apartments in New South Wales cost more.
Sue
Yep, absolutely. Victoria, 8% of the population live in an apartment. So, yep.
And 12% of households live in an apartment. Lone person households are only 46%. Couples, 24%.
Couples with children, or families as we'd know them, is 8%.
Jimmy
What about the ages? Because we were looking at Australia as a whole, 20 to 39 was about 49%.
Sue
Oh, well, in Victoria, they're even younger. 20 to 39 age group, that's 55% of apartment dwellers.
Jimmy
Right. And what languages are they speaking?
Sue
They're speaking English, mostly. Some Mandarin and some Cantonese. But mostly English, 56% English.
Jimmy
Right. So, Mandarin and Cantonese count for a lot of people from China, don't they?
Sue
Yeah, of course, yeah. And the country of birth, 47% of them were born in Australia. People born in China, 6%.
India, 6%. And the rest, 41%.
Jimmy
Over the border in New South Wales, where 17% of New South Wales residents live in Strata, which we keep being told is going to go up in the next 15 years, to 50% of the population here living in Strata.
Sue
By the way, we're going to do an exam on this later.
Jimmy
But there's 91,000 total schemes, over a million total number of lots. I mean, it's just a lot of people living and it's growing and growing and growing. I mean, these figures are out of date before they were even collated.
Sue
Right. So, this was the 2021 census data.
Jimmy
Now, we've got 47% of people between 20 and 39 living in Strata. That's slightly lower than the national average. Again, the big language groups are English, 47%, Mandarin, 8%, and Nepalese or Nepali.
Is that the same thing?
Sue
I guess it must be, yeah.
Jimmy
Is 3%. Country of birth, Australia, 41%, China, 7%, India, 6%. We have a lot of people from China living here, but I always thought Victoria and Melbourne was where a lot of Indian people live.
Sue
They do prefer it because there are bigger communities there already.
Jimmy
Right.
Sue
I read a report today that was saying how a lot of Chinese investors are redoubling their efforts to buy in Australia now because nobody wants to buy in America, because they don't quite know what the situation is going to be like.
Jimmy
Well, they don't quite know what the situation is going to be like here if Mr. Dutton gets in. Only 35% of households in New South Wales are single people, which is lower than everywhere else, I think. Mm, yeah.
This report, if you are interested in statistics, and we seem to be a little bit too interested in them, it's available online. There will be a link in the show notes. You can download it for free and go through the stats, and anything you read will prove something to you that you've always believed.
When we come back, talking about people proving things that they want you to believe, we'll talk about what the two main parties are doing about- Housing. Housing in their promises for the election that's after this. This is just a quick update on the government policies.
We talked about it last week. They've come up with, what would you call it, launches. Basically, Labour wants to give first-time owners, first-time buyers, the opportunity to buy with only a 5% deposit, and they're going to build houses that are just for first-time owners.
When I say houses, of course we mean apartments.
Sue
Right.
Jimmy
That's going to be interesting, isn't it? All these first-time, there's going to be no culture, no history of people going in, at least a couple of people in the committee going, yeah, yeah, we've lived in apartments for the past 20 years. It's going to be all fresh and new.
Sue
Are they just saying that they're going to allocate a certain number of apartments for first-time buyers, or are they saying they're going to build specific blocks in specific areas just for first-time buyers?
Jimmy
I think it's the latter. I think that's what they're saying. What they're going to do is a whole different issue.
But they're obviously trying to attract the younger voters by giving them some sort of hope that things will get better for them.
Sue
Absolutely. Because I think in the past, they've always offered buyer promises like, here's a grant towards a house. Which really becomes inflationary.
Jimmy
Inflationary, yeah. It's pushed the prices up for everyone.
Sue
So now they're kind of working on the supply side, which is really much more important, really.
Jimmy
Yeah. And the opposition is offering the opportunity of making your interest payments on your loan tax deductible, like for the people who own the house. Now, at the moment, that works for investors, which a lot of people say shouldn't happen.
They shouldn't get those tax benefits. I don't know. I mean, if investors stop investing, then who's going to build the houses for the apartments for people to rent?
But the opposition is saying, look, if you're a young person and it's your first time buying, you can make your interest payments tax deductible of your income tax. You don't have to be a company or anything like that. And it's quite interesting.
Sue
Yeah. And they're also still saying you can use your super as well, aren't they?
Jimmy
I think there's an element of that, yeah.
Sue
Which is still very controversial amongst lots of people, really.
Jimmy
But I heard a guy on the radio the other day who, you know, a commentator who was asked to comment on both of these. And he said there was value in both of these things. But he said, why don't we go back to the system that we had in Australia in the 1950s, where the government built apartment blocks and sold them at cost price to people?
Sue
Mm, yeah.
Jimmy
What a brilliant idea.
Sue
Yep, absolutely.
Jimmy
You know, you work out how much it costs to build the apartment and you say to people, this is a $700,000 two-bedroom apartment. Would you like it? I think that's a solution.
Sue
It makes too much good sense, doesn't it, really?
Jimmy
Everybody will say, oh, the government shouldn't be developers. And it sounds like council housing and the buildings will be horrible because they're designed by bureaucrats. And none of which needs to be true.
Sue
Yep.
Jimmy
So, and I don't know what the Greens are. Well, the Greens want to get rid of negative gearing. That's like their totem in a way.
Sue
They also want the Australian government to become involved in building houses as well.
Jimmy
Maybe they'll go for that plan of building houses and selling them at cost price, building apartments and selling them at cost price.
Sue
Because there's only a couple of weeks left till the election, isn't there?
Jimmy
Yeah.
Sue
Not very long at all.
Jimmy
A lot to think about.
Sue
And I guess one of the things that they're going to have to do is sort out the situation with defective work in buildings.
Jimmy
Yes.
Sue
There was a big story this week about allegations that there were defects in a big Meryton development in St Ives.
Jimmy
Yep.
Sue
And it was a huge figure, wasn't it? I think 123 million, the owners were saying they were trying to get to rectify defects.
Jimmy
And this surprised me for two reasons. One, that there was a story about Meryton in the papers at all, because they have been fairly defensively litigious over the years. And they've had a few tussles with Fairfax as they were in the past.
And the other reason it surprised me is that you remember David Chandler telling us that Meryton had really lifted their game in terms of defects, and they were one of the better developers.
Sue
Absolutely. But I don't know how long ago this apartment estate was developed, really.
Jimmy
Right. So maybe it was before.
Sue
It could have been.
Jimmy
Yeah. Because it's a six-year lag on defects. That's when you've got to have your claims in.
All right.
Sue
I'm sure somewhere- I'm sure, and Meryton, I think, are defending the claim.
Jimmy
Of course.
Sue
They're saying there's no defects, or they're sorting them out, or- Yeah, or they're not as bad as- Yeah.
Jimmy
Yeah. I mean, I had somebody, I was on the radio with James Valentine last week, and somebody came on and said, we're having a defects tussle with our developer. And a lot of people in the committee are just sick of it.
And the developer has said, look, we'll just give you a lump sum, and you can fix the defects. And I said, don't do it. Just don't.
That's something that what they'll do is say, we'll give you X amount of money to fix the defects, but you can't come back and ask for more.
Sue
And then while you're fixing the defects, you may well discover lots more defects.
Jimmy
Yeah.
Sue
And suddenly you can't make a claim for those anymore. Yeah. So always get the developer to fix them if you can.
Jimmy
That's what the law says they've got to do. So get them to do what the law says. And maybe if the attorney general's office could just turn its attention to things like this, just for a brief moment, and give people a bit of legal support where they need it, things might change.
Okay. I'm sure somebody somewhere is waiting for me to go and be pampered by them. Or maybe it's afternoon tea time.
I don't know. There's some luxury is awaiting us. So thank you, Sue, for breaking into your relaxation program to talk to us.
And thank you all for listening. We'll talk to you again soon.
Sue
Bye-bye. Happy Easter.
Jimmy
Bye. Thanks for listening to the Flat Chat Wrap podcast. You'll find links to the stories and other references on our website, flatchat.com.au. And if you haven't already done so, you can subscribe to this podcast completely free on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcatcher. Just search for Flat Chat Wrap with a W, click on subscribe, and you'll get this podcast every week without even trying. Thanks again. Talk to you again next week.
Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.