0 Renders

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‘By 2031 Melbourne is projected to overtake Sydney as Australia’s most populous city’

Population & Demographics

As of August 2018, ABS reported that the population of Greater Melbourne reached 5 million residents. Melbourne has added over 120,000 new residents each year for the past three years – the highest of any Australian city. With population growth like this, Melbourne needs to add 45,000 new dwellings per year, or nearly 1,000 per week. A record 18,000 Australians migrated to Victoria in 2017, largely because of housing affordability and job creation. Melbourne has been growing faster than Sydney over the past decade, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), and is set to become Australia’s most populous city by 2031. To accommodate for this growth, the city will require an additional 1.6 million dwellings.

Assessing the population structure and how this may change in the future is critical to understanding where the demand for property will come from. Government policy is based on the evolution of a population’s age structure, gender or living arrangements. The way we live provides policy makers with the information they need to plan for future demands for housing, land and infrastructure.

The current household size of 2.7 people and the growing proportion of lone person households suggest that the dwellings required could be provided through apartment development. As at June 30th 2018, the lone person household and coupled families without children make up 49% of Greater Melbourne’s population. This means that half of Greater Melbourne’s households are well suited to apartment living. The number of lone person households is projected to grow 59% by 2031, the fastest of the varying household types. Strong house price growth in Melbourne’s metropolitan areas is likely to strain affordability and result in an increase in demand for more affordable apartment dwellings.