Love them or hate them, the celebrity housing makeover programs, like The Block, Reno Rumble, House Rules (not to mention Grand Designs and others at the top end of the market) appear to be having a large impact on Australia’s desire to renovate pretty much every aspect of the modern home. Latest data shows that in the year-ended June 2016, alterations and additions were valued at AUD8.006 billion, up 4.2% on a year earlier.
The chart below shows seasonally adjusted alterations and additions on a quarterly basis since the March Quarter of 2012.
To go straight to the dashboard and take a closer look at the data, click here.
The long shallow curve in the chart shows alterations and additions activity declining from a peak of AUD8.019 billion in the year-ended March 2012. That is likely to be bested within the next year.
As we regularly discuss, something is happening in the Australian housing market that is, at a structural level (perhaps its behavioural?) a little hard to put your finger on. Housing starts continue to defy logic and typical market conditions, rising, but doing so with an emphasis on investors at the expense of others (see the next item in Statistics Count), yet those in existing dwellings are spending more and more on their homes.
Perhaps, and its only an option, by no means a certainty, those who are comfortable in their own dwellings are standing out of the housing churn, declining to invest in houses their kids will never be able to buy off them and making their private castle a little more habitable in the certain knowledge that those same kids are there for the long haul?
