---
title: "Yarra — LGA Conditions Intelligence"
url: https://australianproperty.network/lga/vic/yarra/
date: 2026-08-21
modified: 2026-10-06
lang: en
author: "Nicklas Clark"
description: "APN LGA Conditions IntelligenceVictoria Yarra — LGA Conditions Intelligence High Churn, Overseas-Driven Growth (provisional) ERP 2025 101,356 State Victoria Migration Intensity -1.11% of ERP LGA Code 27350 1Internal Migration Flow..."
word_count: 1168
---

# Yarra — LGA Conditions Intelligence

APN LGA Conditions IntelligenceVictoria

### Yarra — LGA Conditions Intelligence

High Churn, Overseas-Driven Growth (provisional)

ERP 2025101,356
StateVictoria
Migration Intensity-1.11% of ERP
LGA Code27350

1Internal Migration Flow
Yarra recorded negative net internal migration in every one of the four years to 2024-25 — the only LGA built in this series where that holds for all four years rather than three or fewer. But the scale is the story here, not the direction: cumulative four-year net of just -3,599 sits against 38,519 arrivals and 42,118 departures, a combined gross flow equal to 79.6% of Yarra's own 2025 population — the highest churn intensity of any populous LGA checked nationally in building this card. The year-by-year pattern is noisy rather than trending: a sharp -1,800 in 2021-22 (both arrivals and departures elevated, consistent with Melbourne's COVID-era inner-city exodus and rebound), narrowing to essentially zero (-29) in 2022-23, then -649 and -1,121 in the two most recent years. Arrivals and departures have both fallen by roughly a third since 2021-22 as the post-lockdown churn spike has unwound, with neither side clearly overtaking the other.

Internal Migration, FY2021-22 to FY2024-25
Arrivals vs Departures (net is negative in every year — see note above)

2Growth Trajectory
Yarra's four-phase shape carries two distinct findings. First, its Stall phase (2009–2016, +20.2%) outgrew its Boom phase (2001–2009, +12.8%) — the third LGA built in this series (after Darwin and the ACT) where the two earliest phases invert the standard boom/stall pattern, consistent with a 2010s inner-Melbourne apartment-building wave outpacing the 2000s. Second, and found nowhere else in this series: Yarra's Recovery phase (2016–2021, -1.5%) is negative — a small pre-COVID population contraction, not a pandemic artefact, since the 2021 count already reflects it. ERP has still grown 47.9% overall since 2001 (68,522 → 101,356), with the Current phase (+10.7%) the strongest since Stall.

2001–2009Boom+12.8%
2009–2016Stall+20.2%
2016–2021Recovery-1.5%
2021–2025Current+10.7%

3Key Conditions

APN Bedrock™ (LGA, pop.-weighted)58.4National population-weighted mean 46.99 · ~0.56σ above (see disclosure below)
Dwelling Approvals, FY2024-251,046ABS 8731.0 · data live through May 2026
Natural Increase, FY2024-25+554Births minus deaths · stable across all four years (+524 to +554)

Combined population change in 2024-25 (-1,121 internal + 554 natural + 2,001 overseas = 1,434 persons, ≈598 implied households at 2.4 persons/household) is comfortably covered by the 1,046 dwelling approvals recorded the same year — unlike some faster-growing LGAs built earlier in this series where approvals trailed demand, Yarra's approval pipeline keeps pace with net population growth once the small internal-migration loss is accounted for. The population-components reconciliation checks exact: -3,599 (internal) + 2,018 (natural increase) + 11,416 (overseas) = 9,835, matching the ERP change (91,521 → 101,356, 2021 → 2025) to the last person. Net overseas migration alone (+11,416) is more than triple the total population gain — it is comfortably offsetting the small, persistent internal-migration loss, not merely supplementing growth from another source.

4Demographic Profile (2021 Census)

Aged 65+11.8%
Aged 0–1410.6%
Not in Labour Force18.8%
Employed63.4%
Low Income (<$400/wk)15.1%
High Income (>$2,000/wk)25.8%
Owned Outright20.2%
Renting53.4%
Census Unoccupied Dwelling Rate15.0%
IRSD / IRSAD Decile9 / 10

The Census unoccupied dwelling rate counts dwellings recorded as unoccupied on Census night — it is not a market vacancy rate; at 15.0% it is second only to Mandurah's 17.1% reading in this series, though the likely driver is different (inner-city investor/short-stay apartment stock rather than Mandurah's holiday-home pattern). Yarra sets new series highs on employed share (63.4%, well ahead of Darwin's prior high of 54.8%), high-income share (25.8%, ahead of the ACT's 22.1%), and renting (53.4%, ahead of Darwin's 49.0%) — alongside the lowest child share recorded in this series so far (10.6% aged 0-14). This is a young, working, renting, high-income, childless population profile, distinct in kind from the retirement-skewed and young-family profiles built elsewhere in this series.

5Conditions Statement
Yarra is the highest-churn LGA built in this series: 79.6% of its own population moved in or out across the four years to 2024-25 (38,519 arrivals, 42,118 departures), yet the net effect of all that movement was a loss of just 3,599 persons — small enough that net overseas migration (+11,416) more than triples it, driving overall population growth of 9,835 (+10.7% in the current phase) despite internal migration running negative in every single year. This is a structurally different mechanism from every other negative-net-migration LGA built in this series: Yarra's population is growing, not shrinking, and the badge below is chosen to reflect that rather than a literal reading of "net migration turning negative." The population is young, highly employed (63.4%, a series high), high-income (25.8%, a series high) and overwhelmingly renting (53.4%, a series high), with the lowest child share found in this series (10.6%) — a working, high-turnover, high-advantage profile (SEIFA IRSD/IRSAD 9/10) distinct from the retirement- or family-skewed populations built elsewhere. Dwelling approvals (1,046) comfortably cover net demand once the small internal-migration loss is netted against overseas and natural increase.

6Methodology & Disclosed Caveats

- **Bedrock figure is population-weighted, not a simple average of suburbs. Readings are on APN Bedrock™ methodology v1.1.** Yarra's population-eligible localities (96,378 residents across 12 localities) produce a population-weighted mean of **58.4** on node `24110`. A simple, unweighted average gives 60.1 instead — a 1.7-point gap, with the weighted figure lower (the LGA's more populous localities score somewhat lower on Bedrock than its smaller ones), the same direction as the gap found on several other LGAs in this series though smaller in size. This card uses the population-weighted figure, consistent with the platform's existing LGA-rollup convention.
- **Classification badge is indicative, and deliberately avoids this series' own "Reversing" label despite Yarra's net internal migration being negative in all four years.** A literal reading of "net migration turning negative, departure-led" would put Yarra in the same bucket as this series' genuinely shrinking LGAs — but Yarra's population grew by 9,835 over the same period. "High Churn" is used instead, reflecting the defining feature of Yarra's data: gross flow equal to 79.6% of ERP against a near-zero net effect. The platform's formal 4-way classification query has not been ratified.
- **No crime/safety data included in this version.** APN Sentinel™ crime-pillar data (node 24121/24122) exists at suburb grain nationally but carries open, jurisdiction-specific data-quality caveats not yet resolved platform-wide — deliberately excluded from this card rather than presented with unresolved caveats attached.
- **Demographic profile is 2021 Census vintage.** Given Yarra's high churn and the scale of overseas migration since 2021 (+11,416 over four years, more than 11% of the 2021 population), the 2021 profile may understate the current renter/high-turnover share further still — the underlying trend, not the exact percentages, is the more durable read.
- **Card format approved 19 August 2026;** the Bedrock population-weighting convention used above was adopted platform-wide in October 2026.

7Sources

**Migration & population:** ABS 3218.0 (DS0002/DS0004/DS0006), 2024-25 release · **Dwelling approvals:** ABS 8731.0, LGA small-area data, live through May 2026 · **Census demographic profile:** ABS Census of Population and Housing 2021, TableBuilder Basic · **SEIFA:** ABS SEIFA 2021, released 27 Apr 2023 · **APN Bedrock™:** node 24110, APN Social Capital Index™ — see [node 24110 methodology](https://australianproperty.network/apn-codex/series-20000/series-24000/series-24100/series-24110/).
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