NSW is trailing both Victoria and Queensland in the pursuit to build enough homes for their respective populations in a worrying sign for addressing housing affordability in our State.
The Property Council of Australia has compared historic data of the number of housing completions per thousand people in NSW, Victoria and Queensland and has found New South Wales comes up short in an important measurement of our housing affordability performance.
โBoosting housing supply is critical to addressing housing affordability, yet currently NSW is completing fewer houses per thousand people than both Victoria and Queensland and this has been the case for the past ten years, demonstrating long term poor performance,โ Property Council NSW Executive Director Jane Fitzgerald said today.
โWhen we donโt build enough homes for our population, prices rise; although the data shows NSW has been improving, the results show that our planning system cannot keep up with demand.
โThe data shows that NSW completed 1.9 homes per thousand people in the year to June 2017, compared to 2.7 in Victoria and 2.4 in Queensland โ NSW has improved from a point of only producing 1.1 homes per thousand people pre GFC ten years ago, yet our current high prices prove it is still not good enough.
โInvestment in residential housing will become less attractive in NSW due to an increase in development levies across the state โ this will stunt supply and further slow completions, increasing house prices.
โWe need better oversight of the planning system so that key reforms can be made where they will have the greatest impact; the NSW Government should reintroduce the Metropolitan Development Program, mothballed since 2010, so that we can see where homes are being lost in the system.
โPremier Berejiklianโs top priority has been to address housing affordability and a slow and inefficient planning system and increased levies are major hurdles that must be addressed if we are to make a dent in prices.โ