Australia's 200,000-Home Shortage
Despite falling prices, Australia still lacks homes
Sep 14, 2026 · 24 min · 11 segments
Andrew Torrington is joined by Diana Mousina, Deputy Chief Economist at AMP, to work through where the Australian economy actually sits and what that means for property and private credit. Diana…
Andrew TorringtonHostYeah, it's a bit of a strange time in Australia because on the one hand, we have a central bank that's raising interest rates and we have pretty elevated inflation.
And in any other circumstance, that environment suggests that economic growth should be pretty solid.
But the issue is that our GDP data at the moment has been running at about 2% in the past 12 months to June 2026, which is the latest data that we have, which isn't actually particularly strong for Australia.
But even in this environment where we've had 2% growth, we've still had this unwanted inflation.
It's actually low productivity growth that's been continuously affecting most industries for the last 10 years.
We haven't actually seen much of an increase in productivity growth in the past decade.
So it's a problem, which is why I think people feel like We get told that things are okay in Australia and the RBA is raising rates, but I don't feel like I'm getting any richer.
I don't feel like my gains, I don't feel like the economic gains are really benefiting me as an individual or me in my family.
So I think that that sort of explains this difference of why we see this weakness in consumer sentiment and why the growth numbers are actually still holding up okay relatively, but it just doesn't feel like those gains have been shared.
Do you think is this going to be more certain for us as investors think or is this something we should get used to for the next little while?
The problem is that productivity growth takes a while to change and to improve.
So while there is a focus on it from the government, I think it will take a while to turn around.
And we're also in an environment where we have had a few rate hikes this year.
So in that environment, I think that growth is going to actually be a bit softer in the next 12 months.
We've seen it slowing in home prices across the nation, both as a result of higher interest rates, but also... because of the tax changes announced in the budget, which we'll probably get to.
Yeah, it's a bit of a strange time in Australia because on the one hand, we have a central bank that's raising interest rates and we have pretty elevated inflation.
And in any other circumstance, that environment suggests that economic growth should be pretty solid.
But the issue is that our GDP data at the moment has been running at about 2% in the past 12 months to June 2026, which is the latest data that we have, which isn't actually particularly strong for Australia.
But even in this environment where we've had 2% growth, we've still had this unwanted inflation.
It's actually low productivity growth that's been continuously affecting most industries for the last 10 years.
We haven't actually seen much of an increase in productivity growth in the past decade.
So it's a problem, which is why I think people feel like We get told that things are okay in Australia and the RBA is raising rates, but I don't feel like I'm getting any richer.
I don't feel like my gains, I don't feel like the economic gains are really benefiting me as an individual or me in my family.
So I think that that sort of explains this difference of why we see this weakness in consumer sentiment and why the growth numbers are actually still holding up okay relatively, but it just doesn't feel like those gains have been shared.
Do you think is this going to be more certain for us as investors think or is this something we should get used to for the next little while?
The problem is that productivity growth takes a while to change and to improve.
So while there is a focus on it from the government, I think it will take a while to turn around.
And we're also in an environment where we have had a few rate hikes this year.
So in that environment, I think that growth is going to actually be a bit softer in the next 12 months.
We've seen it slowing in home prices across the nation, both as a result of higher interest rates, but also... because of the tax changes announced in the budget, which we'll probably get to.
Every episode on Radar is fully transcribed, speaker-labeled, and rich with metadata. Here is a taste of this one. Try Radar for free to see the rest.
3 of 8
Australia's 200,000-Home Shortage
Despite falling prices, Australia still lacks homes
The Inflation Growth Trap
Persistent inflation could force Australia into stagnation
Why Growth Feels So Painful
Australia's growth hides a painful productivity problem
+5 more clips · 7 min 32 sec of audio in all
7 of 25
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
All 8 clips — the highlight moments, each cut as its own audio, with a title and a speaker
All 11 segments — the transcript broken into labeled sections, every ad read marked
All 25 topics — jump to every other episode discussing the same subject
Every related episode — other shows Radar links to this one
No account is needed to search Radar.