We’ve updated Place Forecast with dwelling projections.
Here’s the gist: Our forecasts calculate dwelling projections via building approvals. From the building approvals, based on completion times and rates, we can determine how many building completions happen in each small area. Dwelling projections are the most significant driver of population growth. Therefore, dwelling projections substantially inform our population projections.
Let’s go through that with a bit more details and visuals.
To build a house, you must get the council’s approval, commonly known as building approvals. The council reports these approvals to the ABS, which consolidates these reports into datasets.
We integrated a custom dataset from the ABS for building approvals into our system based on SA1s. For each small area and LGA forecast, you can see those approvals by structure, either for detached buildings or medium or high density buildings. Building approvals come in a monthly dataset that we receive once a quarter, and we will update our forecasts with this data every quarter, too. In our forecasts, you can see this data by year (see image above) or month, and you can compare approvals across small areas, too.
Once you get building approval from the council, you can start building your house. Once you complete your house, the council checks that your new home meets all code and legal requirements. Unfortunately, the ABS does not provide building completions on SA1-level as a dataset. So, we took matters into our own hands.
To calculate building completions, we need two things: how long it takes, on average, from building approval to building completion. This thing is known as the completion time.
The other thing to know is how many buildings are actually completed, given the amount of approvals. This thing is the completion rate.
We calculate both completion times and rates based on state-based building approvals and completion data from the ABS. It’s quite an extensive dataset that goes back to the 1960s, with monthly counts for both detached and medium or high density building structures.
We calculate completion times and rates based on the correlation between approvals and completions. Applied to SA1 building approvals, the outcome of this calculation is building completions.
In essence, we project the number of building completions for each small area in a forecast. We have all data by structure (detached and medium or high density) and by month, and we update this data once per quarter.
Now that we have building completions, we add those completions to the baseline dwelling estimates for the Census year of 2021 that we already had in the system. Baseline dwelling estimates and building completions together form the dwelling projections for 2022 and beyond. Do you remember the flat line in the dwelling graph from before, where we only had data for 2021? Yeah, that’s the past now. Now this flat graph looks like this:
This change is huge! Not only does this affect the total dwellings, but it also affects all related data, such as the components (privacy, occupancy, structure) and all reports related to dwellings and housing. Also, check out the comparisons between various aspects of dwelling-related data across small areas.
Dwellings are a major driver of population. You can’t grow the population if people don’t have a place to live, right? Something something housing crisis Australia here. No, we’re not taking the bait. Back to the dwelling projections. Let’s not get distracted.
Now that we have dwelling projections, we can use that information to determine the target population of a small area. Simply put, the target population is the result of taking the occupied dwelling count for a year and multiplying it by the average household size. The average household size is the average number of people per dwelling.
When we compare the target population with the calculated population, the difference is either positive or negative, resulting in a change of in-migration. In essence, more dwellings in a small area lead to an increase in in-migration; fewer dwellings have the opposite effect.
Have we piqued your interest with our new dwelling projections? We are more than happy to show you with your data. Contact us to book a short demo (about 30 minutes), and we show you what our system can do. That means we can set up an actual forecast for your LGA and explore it with you. In the demo, You can see how we forecast your population and your dwellings and how they interact.
Frankly, we’re exhausted and relieved.
Creating this dwelling forecast was way bigger than we initially thought. At times, we struggled, for example, when we couldn’t find any reliable and up-to-date dataset for completion times or rates.
But overall, we are very happy now. We created an up-to-date, detailed, usable, and affordable population, dwelling, and housing forecast. It feels complete and whole.
We want to thank our clients for all their support, patience, and trust. Without their feedback and encouragement, our product would merely be half as valuable.
Thank you!
Andrew and Bernd from Place Info
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