Rich Harvey

So it's really interesting that those numbers are quite significant.

And what's interesting is just why did the market go up so much, even though migration was low?

And the simple answer was people just wanted to improve their lifestyle, their digs.

They wanted a study.

And we also had a lot of expats coming back to Australia as well.

So, yeah, pretty significant numbers that were kept at bay.

No, I don't think so at all.

I don't think, well, I shouldn't say that.

We don't know.

You don't know what the X factor is going to be, you know, whether there's going to be another world war or another COVID outbreak or some other kind of pandemic.

We just don't know.

Even though our borders are now fully open, it doesn't mean that we'd suddenly instantly get a flood of new migrants coming back.

So we used to average around 230,000 people a year coming into Australia.

So the ABS numbers are currently showing that migration is running around half its pre-COVID levels.

So about 120,000 at the moment.

But the government is super keen to welcome back migrants with open arms.

In fact, we had a cap on permanent migration of 160,000 persons, and that's recently been lifted to 195,000.

And on top of that, you've also got a lot of temporary visas and other sponsored visas that are also coming.

So in short, we should be back to about 240,000 before you know it.

And the thing is, all of these migrants are going to be landing in the middle of Australia's greatest rental crisis.