Tuesday 21st March 
The Kelvin Club, 14-30 Melbourne Pl, Melbourne VIC 3000  map
5:30pm

Join us in-person we present findings from our latest research note – Pandemic rental dynamics: an (un)natural experiment in excess supply by Jesse Hermans and Tim Helm.

You’d never get ethics permission for an experiment like this. Take a city of 5 million, growing at 100,000 per year, construction rates steady – a city on a stable trajectory of rapid growth. Now freeze time, drop in 130,000 extra dwellings, and resume.

One such experiment was the experience of Melbourne over the course of 2020 and 2021. With one of the world’s longest lockdowns, the population shrank in absolute terms by 80,000 people, while construction continued more or less unabated.

The result? An urban population by mid-2021 some 340,000 residents short of levels expected in projections from just two years prior – or, expressed another way, a city with 130,000 dwellings more than previously thought to be needed.

Pandemic policies engineered an over-supply of dwellings. What were the consequences for housing costs? 

What can this (un)natural experiment tell us about the prominence of supply-side factors in shaping house prices? 

This is a free in-person event.

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