UDIA has proudly launched our UDIA Housing Index (UHI) nationally. This significant research project was more than 12 months in the making and has been designed to provide a quarterly ‘health check’ on the new build Australian housing market and provide data and insights on the trajectory (growth or decline) of supply, demand and cost factors influencing overall market activity and market pricing.
Until the UDIA Housing Index, there has been no single source of comprehensive residential market, construction and development analytics that holistically captures the true nature of the nation’s chronic housing crisis.
Industry and Government will now have the ability to utilise the UDIA Housing index to get behind the raw numbers for a clear understanding of housing market performance and growth or contraction trajectories. This will be valuable in helping to inform where and what type of policy interventions and initiatives need to be developed and targeted to help boost aggregate market performance.
A key point of difference between the UDIA Housing Index and other composite indexes monitoring property market dynamics, is our focus on the new build home segment – which speaks directly to the core interests of property developers, consultants, agents, and other stakeholders across the property and planning sectors. It will therefore enable a better understanding of their business in relation to market performance over the last decade.
The UDIA Housing Index provides quarterly data from 2015 through to the most recent quarter (March 2024 at present). This allows for indexed comparisons of current quarter market performance across demand, supply and costs dimensions against other periods of market performance from across the last decade, at the national and State and Territory scales.
WA Insights
While recording a modest softening in new residential market performance in March, WA was the best performing new housing market in the nation, with the UHI 18 points higher than the national average, at 111.98.
While the performance of the WA market may seem at odds with the current experience of many of our developer members, this result is underpinned by exceptionally strong demand indicators that inform the Index, including:
population growth (+121% higher than the long run average); and
the tightest rental vacancy rates (along with SA) in the nation
The WA UHI reading is also being supported by some modest quarterly growth in the Supply sub-index which include:
- 13% increase dwelling approvals and commencements;
- 14% rise in the value of residential construction work completed (boosted by stimulus builds)
UDIA expects WA will be more heavily weighed down in coming quarters due to declining new dwelling commencements, the deepening supply crisis in rental listings and a general decline in the aggregate rates and values of residential completions.
Accordingly, we can expect to see a significant decline in the performance of UHI supply index for WA for the coming quarters.
The current supply crisis that we are experiencing in WA was clearly highlighted in the most recent UDIA WA Urban Development Index release, that represented a supply v demand ratio that is now down to 0.7.
That is the lowest level it has been in over two decades.
You can read the full UDI report here and recent media coverage in The West Australian here.
New National Data Dashboard
The Interactive UDIA Housing Index portal is now live on the UDIA National website. which allows customisation of reporting in relation to timeframes and location for the main Index and the three sub-indexes.
The accompanying UDIA Housing Dashboard is another key resource available in the interactive UDIA Housing Index portal, which presents regularly refreshed updates to 26 demand, supply and industry profile indicators.
The UDIA Housing Index will be released quarterly via a headline report as well as featuring on our new UDIA National website featuring headline dashboards and interactive charts and summary insights.
For more information about this important national research project please contact:
Head of Research (National & WA)
Toby Adams