but still a world away from the National housingaccord 1.2m target.
16,579 dwellings were approved in January against the need for around 22,000 (allowing for attrition) – around 75% of total need.
Approvals have started to skew towards more unit development, led by NSW, which whilst being what State Government planners want, will be the hardest to actually get built due to #feasibility .
Either way, on these numbers, Australia continues to track closer to actually building 900,000 dwellings over 5 years instead of 1.2 million.
Article in The Nightly: https://lnkd.in/gEaHDvQk
Dwelling approvals are broadly in line with 10 year average of almost 17,000 approvals per month, but adding Thursday’s figures to last year’s 175,000 approvals, and the country is already 75,000 dwelling behind where it needs to be, according to housing economist Cameron Kusher.
You really need to be approving 250 to 260,000 dwellings a year. It’s trending higher, but it’s a long way from where it needs to be,” he said.
Completion rates are the biggest concern for Maxwell Shifman, the chief executive of developer Intrapac Property and former president of the UDIA National
Mr Shifman said that while state governments have been pushing mid-rise developments by speeding up the approval process, they have failed to understand the economic reality of building.
“The cost of building higher density housing has exploded since COVID, and is 40 to 50 per cent more expensive.” Mr Shifman said.
“If builders are going to meet the market, they would have to charge less for an apartment than it would cost to build one.”
The UDIA NSW has called out New South Wales for its poorest approvals performance in 12 years, 42 per cent lower than the peak of over 73,000 approvals in 2016.
“The sharp declines in apartment approvals reinforce UDIA’s ongoing messaging that the combination of weak feasibility and slow planning reform has led to a failure to implement the immediate step change that was desperately needed in infill development to achieve the Accord target of 75,000 …” said NSW chief executive Stuart Ayres.
Mr Shifman said there was a similar issue with infill developments in Victoria. He said the Victorian government was “ideologically opposed” to reviewing the State’s policy on green wedges on the city fringes, something that had not been updated in 13 years.
He said that with economics working against medium to higher density construction, the best chance for new homes being built was to look at middle ring sites that were once on the outskirts of urban growth boundaries but were now enveloped in urban sprawl.