Rise of the granny flat: how the way we live is changing
It’s not really ‘nanafication’ if it’s the kids who are living out the back.
It is found in every city, suburb and town on the Australian continent. It is the quintessential Australian home defined as a separate house on a separate block of land.
We Australians may not have invented suburban living, but we have elevated this lifestyle to an art form. And while there has been a recent shift towards denser living, the overwhelming majority of Australians still prefer to live a low density lifestyle.
The census can be brutally direct with facts. Almost 20 million Australians live in a separate house on a separate block of land. Indeed there were 8 million such houses in Australia in 2021 up 8 per cent on the 2016 figure.
The “separate house on a separate block of land” supports a building industry that delivered an average of 116,000 net new homes each year over the five years to 2021.
At the other end of the density scale there is high-rise living which can be defined across two censuses as an apartment in structures offering four-plus stories. Around 1.3 million Australians live in these Manhattanesque high-rise apartment buildings.
However the bottom line is that Australian suburbia still beats inner-city apartmentia by a ratio of 15:1. And this is because most Australians believe that the suburban home is the best accommodation model in which to raise a family. Low-density suburban homes appeal to parents aged 25-55 and who have kids living at home.
But the Australian lifestyle and life cycle has changed over time. Generally between 1950 and 1980 couples tended to have children from their mid-20s onwards thus providing one of the demand-drivers for the home building industry. After all, more families means greater demand for suburban houses.
However, from the 1990s onwards, singles and couples increasingly postponed having children to their late-20s or even into their early-30s. This megatrend shift in the way life is lived opened up demand for apartment living for a new life form: childless singles and couples in their 20s and 30s.
And because inner-city apartments are invariably devoid of kids the apartment design aesthetic shifted to minimalism. After all, clean and clinical lines do not mix with a toddler’s scatter.
But wait, there’s more to the apartment ascendancy. There is now a market for older couples to downshift in their late-50s or early-60s as empty-nester couples (today’s baby-boomers) seeking out the low-maintenance advantage of apartment living. This lifestyle can be accessed by the beach, close to the city centre or within or near the suburb in which they may have raised a family.
Toss in an influx of foreign students (somewhat depleted at the 2021 census) and there is a growing market (off a low base) for a different kind of accommodation. High-rise living is, or was, the answer.
But this lifestyle was dealt a mighty blow by the pandemic. Over the five years to 2021 the number of high-rise apartments jumped by 52 per cent but the number of residents living in these apartment increased by 36 per cent. The Covid-inspired exodus of foreign students negatively impacted the apartment market.
A question remains as to whether open borders will restore inner-city apartment demand to pre-Covid levels. Early indications of enrolments suggest that 2022 figures have exceeded 2019 figures.
There has always been an element of high density living in Australia’s largest cities. But the advent of foreign students and the demand for fuss-free low-maintenance accommodation on either side of the tightly-defined family-raising-years (say, 35-59), combined with planning policies favouring denser living, has had a profound effect on Australian cities.
Sydney and Melbourne lead Australia in denser living partly because they offer more affordable access to the housing market. But also because denser developments located closer to the CBD obviate the need for commuting.
In Melbourne’s CBD North (between Lonsdale and Victoria streets) a 6000sq m “student precinct” contains 15,982 high-rise apartments out of a total housing stock of 15,997 dwellings (effectively ground to three storey).
This precinct is the most densely populated part of Australia. Similar densities apply across central and waterfront Sydney, in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley, in Perth’s King’s Gardens and within the Adelaide CBD.
But going forward, planners’ preferences for higher density is likely to be challenged by the work from home movement. Here is a legacy of the pandemic that supports the rise of self-contained 20-or 30-minute cities, across Sydney and Melbourne in particular, where workers commute less often into the city centre.
Plus there’s been a surprise finding amid the census figures that is injecting density, and efficiency, not just into high-rise living but also into the suburban heartland (in Sydney at least). The construction of a house or apartment attached to a house (a “granny flat”) has skyrocketed from 4729 granny flats in 2016 to 21,342 in 2021 – an increase of more than 400 per cent.
Similarly the number of people living in this kind of accommodation has jumped from 8201 in 2016 to 42,027 in 2021.
The hotspots for these granny flats are all in Sydney’s west, in places like Bossley Park with 149 granny flats and with similar numbers in Auburn central (148), Chester Hill (144) and beyond.
I am tempted to call this granny-flat movement the “nanafication” of Sydney’s suburbia. However most so-called granny-flat residents are in fact in their late 20s or early 30s. (The peak age is 26.) Most granny-flat residents are Australian born; some are also from China and Vietnam.
This industry really needs a makeover. Out with “granny flat” and in with edgy eco-pod or an acronym like self-contained lifestyle unit or SCLU. It’s a way, I suppose, of providing adult children with a sense of independence while enabling access to the family home. These units also lift densities in middle and outer suburbia.
But not all Australians live in a private dwelling be it a traditional Darryl-Kerrigan-styled house, a high-rise apartment or a granny flat or indeed a SCLU-for-you.
Around 172,646 residents spent census night in a hotel or motel, down 48 per cent on 2016 levels. The pandemic wreaked havoc upon commercial accommodation establishments.
Australia’s prison population was counted at 43,154 in 2021 up 9 per cent from 2016. This population is overwhelmingly male. The same can be said of immigration detention centres. The recent census shows 1357 immigrant hopefuls in detention, 97 per cent of whom are male.
Australia has a surprisingly sizeable population in convents and monasteries. This number was 3126 in 2021 down 24 per cent from 2016.
I am not sure if monks and nuns (presumably) were sent into parishes or similar in response to Covid, or if there has been some kind of spiritual diminution over this period. Intriguingly, there are more males (55 per cent) than females (45 per cent) in these religious institutions.
My theory that modern Australia is evolving a residential accommodation stock that is increasingly nuanced or tailored to specific stages of the life cycle is evident in a comparison of the age profile of housing types.
There are three single-year-of-age peaks among the 20-million or so Australians living in a separate house on a separate block of land. These age peaks are 12, 39 and 51 which capture pre-teen children (aged 12), pre-divorce couples (typically 39) and early-50s parents-with-teenage-kids (51).
The profile of high-rise apartment residents shows that this kind of accommodation appeals to Australians aged 20-40 which covers the student years, the single- and couple-years, and even stretching into the child-rearing years. It’s the sports-loving friends-visiting teenage years where suburbia beats high-rise living.
And then there’s a nursing home community of 145,056 in 2021 (up 8 per cent from 2016) which progressively captures a share of the population aged 65 and over. The nursing-home market-share surges progressively throughout the 80s, reaches a crescendo at age 90, and then falls back to earth by 100.
There’s an accommodation for everyone and for every stage of the life cycle in Australia. But at some point, the underlying megatrends shift. I think with the Covid ordeal we have just passed through an inflection point and that a big shift is evident in the 2021 census, including the question about the houses and the apartments and institutions that we call home.
Bernard Salt is founder and executive director of The Demographics Group. Research and data by data scientist Hari Hara Priya Kannan.