Developer Interest in High-Density Apartments Plummets
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Developer Interest in High-Density Apartments Plummets

With foreign buyers staying on their own shores, local residential development suffers.

By V. L Hendrickson
Wed, Jun 16, 2021 12:08pmGrey Clock 2 min

The market for residential developments in Australia is under duress.

Last year, total residential site sales in the country dropped to $4 billion, close to 65% lower than its 2014 peak of $11.3 billion, according to a report Tuesday from Knight Frank.

In addition, building approvals for new apartments sank below 40,000 in 2020 for the first time since 2013, the data showed. The pipeline for such units is set to plummet over the next three years, with 86,400 set to be completed by 2024, compared to the 135,300 that came online between 2018 and 2020.

Low-density developments are faring better, the data showed. Sales for those sites jumped 23.1% last year.

“Developers across the country are continuing to shift their focus and risk toward boutique apartment developments and diversifying their portfolios with low-density sites,” Shayne Harris, Knight Frank’s head of residential for Knight Frank’s Australia offices, said in the report.

Meanwhile, interest from foreign investors plunged in 2020, the data showed. There was less than $500 million of foreign investment last year, down more than 90% from its 2016 peak of $5.2 billion. It was the first time investment from foreign developers has dropped under $1 billion since 2012.

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Australia closed its borders to foreign travel, meaning investors were not able to scout sites as they normally would. That’s kept many from committing to new acquisitions.

“Although we’re in uncertain times, we can’t underestimate the impact investors will have on the apartment market as they start to return across the country,” Mr. Harris said. “It’s only time before they’re lured back to the new apartment market given the cheap finance, a thinning new supply pipeline and lowered residential vacancy rates.”

Some experts also expect Australia is on the precipice of a boom in pent-up foreign demand as soon as borders open and immigration normalises, Mansion Global has reported.

Close to half of sales of residential development sites last year were in New South Wales, which had nearly $2 billion in deals in 2020, according to the Knight Frank report. Victoria followed, with just under $1.3 billion in transactions.

The Gold Coast defied the trend away from high-density developments, registering a 238% increase in site sales in 2020, the report found. At the same time, sales of such sites in Brisbane itself dropped 86%.

Reprinted by permission of Mansion Global. Copyright 2021 Dow Jones & Company. Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Original date of publication: June 15, 2021



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Early indications from several big regional real-estate boards suggest March was overall another down month.

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Early indications from several big regional real-estate boards suggest March was overall another down month.

By Robb M. Stewart
Tue, Apr 15, 2025 3 min

OTTAWA–The nascent recovery in Canada’s housing market has become a casualty of the trade dispute with the U.S.

The latest national home-resale data are due out Tuesday, but early indications from several big regional real-estate boards suggest March was overall another down month as many prospective buyers exercised caution.

The recent weakness in home sales has dimmed the previously brighter outlook for the property market coming into 2025, when buyers were encouraged by the Bank of Canada’s aggressive interest-rate cuts.

“The chills the U.S. trade war has sent through participants in the housing market are getting frostier,” said Robert Hogue , assistant chief economist at Royal Bank of Canada.

Hogue said resales are down materially in a number of markets two months running, and home prices in several markets are coming under pressure as inventories rise. And although Canada was spared additional levies when President Trump unveiled so-called reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries earlier this month, no meaningful rebound is likely so long as trade uncertainty lingers, he said.

Home buyers in Toronto, Canada’s most populous city and the country’s financial hub, aren’t turning up for the usual spring pickup in property-market activity.

Sales in the Greater Toronto Area slumped 23.1% in March from a year earlier, as new listings for the region jumped close to 29%, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board. That marked the worst month of resales since 1998.

The board’s chief information officer, Jason Mercer , said many potential home buyers were likely taking a wait-and-see approach given the economic worries as well as a pending federal election. “Homebuyers need to feel their employment situation is solid before committing to monthly mortgage payments over the long term,” he said, adding that ownership has become more affordable and prices in the area fell about 3.8% year on year in March.

Uncertainty is also weighing on the housing market in Calgary, the biggest city in oil-rich Alberta. The city’s real-estate board said realtors reported a 19% drop in sales of existing homes from last year, with a similar trend of improving supply and a sharp increase in the average number of days that homes were on the market.

On the West Coast, home sales registered in the metro Vancouver area of British Columbia were the lowest for March since 2019, falling 13.4% on a year earlier and coming in close to 37% below the 10-year seasonal average, while active listings continued to rise.

There are some areas of resilience. The Quebec Professional Association of Real Estate Brokers said total sales in the province were up 9% year on year in March. Still, RBC’s Hogue estimated Montreal sales in March were down about 15% from December seasonally adjusted, effectively rolling back the advance since the end of last summer.

The most recent national data for the country, from the Canadian Real Estate Association, showed resales dropped 9.8% month over month in February, when homebuyers may also have been put off by harsh winter storms in parts of the country. That marked the sharpest fall since May 2022 and brought the level of sales to their lowest level since November 2023, snapping signs that activity had been picking up in recent months.

Rishi Sondhi , an economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank, in a recent report estimated the country was tracking toward a double-digit quarterly decline in Canadian home sales and a mid-single-digit drop in Canadian average home prices for the first three months of 2025. That is much weaker than a pre-Trump inauguration forecast made in December that projected a loosening in federal mortgage rules, lower interest rates and continued economic growth would fuel a modest gain in sales and prices.

Central-bank officials are set to decide Wednesday on monetary policy, but they have signaled a cautious approach to rates as they balance the prospect of tariffs stoking price pressures against the likelihood that they will dampen demand and weigh on the economy. That could mean the Bank of Canada will pause after seven straight cuts to its policy rate.

Housing is a hot topic for party leaders campaigning ahead of the April 28 election, with both the incumbent Liberal Party and opposition Conservatives proposing tax cuts and incentives to encourage buyers and builders.

The outlook for new homes has also dimmed with the tariff threat. The value of residential-building permits issued in February fell 2.9% from a month prior, adding to a retreat in January that took back some of the surge in intentions in the final month of last year, Statistics Canada data last week showed.

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