Sustainability goes mainstream for Australian property buyers
Green is the new black among prospective homebuyers
2 min
The number of for-sale listings promoting eco-friendly inclusions in homes has jumped in recent years as would-be buyers prioritise sustainability, new research reveals.
Analysis by Ray White shows a clear trend in what the real estate group has dubbed ‘green listings’, with energy and water-saving features the most frequently mentioned in ads.
“Over the last three years, there has been an increasing proportion of listings with ‘solar panels’, ‘battery’ or ‘off-grid’ appearing in advertising copy,” Ray White data analyst William Clark said.
“This is not an exhaustive list of ways a house can be green, however solar panels were the most frequently advertised, while batteries and being off-grid make a house green to the greatest degree.”
Sellers are responding to increased demand from homebuyers but regulatory changes in some states, including laws against gas connections in new builds, are also driving the trend, Mr Clark said.
Most listings with green features mention just one, he added.
“Although, it is also becoming more frequent over time to see two to four and even five green features per house. In 2023, we even saw eight listings with five green features.”
Queensland had the highest proportion of green listings (20.3 per cent) in the 2022-23 financial year, followed closely by the Northern Territory (19.6 per cent) and South Australia (19.5 per cent).
The country’s two most populated states, New South Wales and Victoria, had the lowest proportion of green listings with 11.4 per cent of all ads each.
“There’s no denying that all states have sufficient physical space to support more properties with rainwater tanks and a self-powered grid, but we saw in the results that Queensland, with large amounts of wealth along the coast, had the most green listings,” Mr Clark said.
“Meanwhile, New South Wales had a lot of ground to cover in last place. As the industry modernises and more laws are put in place, will 2024 see even more green listings?”
The findings mirror analysis by data house PropTrack earlier this, which found 55 per cent of surveyed Australians rate a home’s energy efficiency as being “extremely important”.
That figure was up 17 per cent on the same period last year, perhaps indicating the desire to save money during the cost-of-living crunch, the research concluded.
The analysis found solar power was the green feature most searched for (71 per cent) while other items on property searchers’ wish lists included double-glazed windows, effective insulation, hydronic heating and electric vehicle charging.
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Excluding the Covid-19 pandemic period, annual growth was the lowest since 1992
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Australia’s commodity-rich economy recorded its weakest growth momentum since the early 1990s in the second quarter, as consumers and businesses continued to feel the impact of high interest rates, with little expectation of a reprieve from the Reserve Bank of Australia in the near term.
The economy grew 0.2% in the second quarter from the first, with annual growth running at 1.0%, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday. The results were in line with market expectations.
It was the 11th consecutive quarter of growth, although the economy slowed sharply over the year to June 30, the ABS said.
Excluding the Covid-19 pandemic period, annual growth was the lowest since 1992, the year that included a gradual recovery from a recession in 1991.
The economy remained in a deep per capita recession, with gross domestic product per capita falling 0.4% from the previous quarter, a sixth consecutive quarterly fall, the ABS said.
A big area of weakness in the economy was household spending, which fell 0.2% from the first quarter, detracting 0.1 percentage point from GDP growth.
On a yearly basis, consumption growth came in at just 0.5% in the second quarter, well below the 1.1% figure the RBA had expected, and was broad-based.
The soft growth report comes as the RBA continues to warn that inflation remains stubbornly high, ruling out near-term interest-rate cuts.
RBA Gov. Michele Bullock said last month that near-term rate cuts aren’t being considered.
Money markets have priced in a cut at the end of this year, while most economists expect that the RBA will stand pat until early 2025.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has warned this week that high interest rates are “smashing the economy.”
Still, with income tax cuts delivered at the start of July, there are some expectations that consumers will be in a better position to spend in the third quarter, reviving the economy to some degree.
“Output has now grown at 0.2% for three consecutive quarters now. That leaves little doubt that the economy is growing well below potential,” said Abhijit Surya, economist at Capital Economics.
“But if activity does continue to disappoint, the RBA could well cut interest rates sooner,” Surya added.
Government spending rose 1.4% over the quarter, due in part to strength in social-benefits programs for health services, the ABS said.
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