Water use study highlights empty flats in Melbourne's Docklands
A report by a land policy lobby group has found more than a quarter of units in Melbourne's new Docklands developments are likely to be sitting empty.
Prosper Australia's 2014 Speculative Vacancies report looks at 2013 annual usage data provided by Melbourne's three water supply companies to estimate how many dwellings may be vacant.
In last year's report, Southbank was near the top of the residential vacancies list, but the report's authors could not get data for that area this year.
Its place at the top of the table has been taken by Docklands, another area where large apartment developments have sprung up in significant numbers over recent years.
Prosper's report finds that 489 residences used no water whatsoever in 2013, which was 17 per cent of dwellings connected to a provider.
The report found a further 10 per cent of dwellings used less than 50 litres of water a day - less than a third of estimated average usage for single person households - indicating that they were likely to be empty for the majority of the year.
The report, written by real estate analyst Catherine Cashmore, estimates that almost a third of the area's units may be empty at any time given that the short-term vacancy rate of properties available for rent is 4.6 per cent.
Ms Cashmore noted that well over half of the area's residents are renters, indicating the dominance of investor ownership in that region, which she warned has echoes of recently collapsed housing markets.
"In Ireland, property related tax incentives fuelled a flood of demand from the buy-to-let sector, primarily in the form of high-density apartment construction as well as new housing in estates far from employment centres," she observed.
"The over supply of poor quality vacant dwellings was not broadly evident until the crisis hit. Subsequently, in the two years leading up to the market peak of 2007, almost half of all new Irish home purchases stemmed from speculative investor activity rather than genuine homebuyer demand."
Other Melbourne suburbs with high numbers of no water usage households were: Cardinia/Clyde (12.4 per cent), Carlton South (7.3 per cent), Essendon North (5.6 per cent) and West Melbourne (5.5 per cent).
The levels of empty commercial premises in some areas appear to be much higher again, with just over half the commercial properties in Caroline Springs using no water, while almost 30 per cent of Docklands businesses had no consumption and appeared clearly empty.
The estimated vacancy rates - those premises using less than 50 litres of water a day - were higher again.
The report acknowledges the shortcomings of using water consumption as a proxy for occupancy - such as the growing use of water tanks in some areas, the lack of individual metering in some unit blocks and the possibility of holiday houses/work accommodation - however it also notes that water leaks are likely to mean many empty properties appear occupied on this methodology.
"While water data will not give an exact measurement of long-term SVs [speculative vacancies], it can assist government policymakers to identify vacancy trends and design policies that increase affordability via more efficient utilisation of our urban landscape," it noted.
