List of the day: Top 20 building and population hotspots

Australia's top 20 hotspots for both population growth and residential construction have been identified by the Housing Industry Association Economics Group in their Population and Residential Building Construction report.

To make the list, suburbs were required to have a population growth rater faster than the national average, as well as approved residential building work in excess of $100 million, for regions in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia, or in excess of $50 million for South Australia. The Northern Territory and ACT were required to record over $20 million. In Tasmania the threshold was $5 million.

The report notes that with such a high population growth at a national level, or 1.8%, just 698 suburbs came above this, with just 50 falling into the required building work level.

“In terms of building work approved, the Waterloo-Beaconsfield area in Sydney’s inner south recorded the greatest value of new residential work approved with $513.2 million during the year. Being an area with a relatively large population already, the 4.6% growth in the population in 2012/13 is impressive but is not sufficient to rank among the top 20 hot spots nationally,” the report explains.

“Three new suburbs in the ACT took out the top three spots on the list this year, with Crace leading the way followed by Bonner (top of last year’s list) and Casey. All three of these areas recorded population growth in excess of 40% in 2012/13. The high rate of growth reflects a stage in the emergence of a new suburb whereby households are moving into their new homes in an area which had previously been unoccupied vacant land.”

This is therefore an irregular situation seeing ACT take out the top three spaces, and if they had not then Victoria’s Brunswick East, Craigieburn-Mickleham and Queensland’s Clinton-New Auckland would have achieved bottom spaces on the top 20.

Their top 20 hotspots (Statistical Area Level 2):

1. Crace ACT (58.1%)
   
2. Bonner ACT (43.3%)
   
3. Casey ACT (40.6%)
4. Melbourne VIC (22.7%)
5. Abbotsford VIC (19.7%)
6. Forrestdale/Harrisdale/Piara Waters WA (19.1%)
7. Cranbourne East VIC (16.5%)
8. Baldivis WA (15.8%)
9. Docklands VIC (15.3%)
10. Yanchep WA (14.8%)
11. Parklea/Kellyville Ridge NSW (13.3%)
12. South Morang VIC (12.6%)
13. Truganina VIC (11.0%)
14. Cobbitty – Leppington NSW (10.8%)
15. Ellenbrook WA (9.3%)
16. Homebush Bay/Silverwater NSW (9.2%)
17. Epping VIC (9.1%)
18. Deeragun QLD (8.9%)
19. North Lakes/Mango Hill QLD (8.8%)
20. Point Cook VIC (8.7%)

Source: HIA

Interestingly, the report also notes that there have been strong leading indicators of activity in New South Wales and Western Australia, as well as improving signs for Queensland.

These developments, however, are past this report’s cut off and will perhaps alter the list in next year’s.