The passing of the buck on missing #housingstatement targets has already begun. With an average of 65,300 homes per year needed to be built in Metro Melbourne (or around 72,650 approved, based on 90% being constructed) to reach 1.7 million by 2051, just 46,300 approvals were issued in the last 12 months. A 57% increase is needed based on year 1, which is worse when you realise this is gross approvals, not net of demolitions.
#Councils are already blaming #developers & #builders for not doing their part in making applications. They also blame the State for setting unrealistic targets.
The State #Government is blaming Councils for not approving things fast enough, using the big political stick of threatening to intervene if they don't.
The industry looks at them both for being idiotic, being asked to deliver a higher volume than ever of mostly non-feasible dwellings in some of the most trying economic and productivity-sapping conditions in history.
The Councils are (partially) right. Not on blaming industry, but indeed having for the most part been given completely unreasonable housing targets – especially for established areas reliant on higher density development to reach them. Many of these areas are years away from seeing a quantity of new #feasible supply.
One year won't tell the whole story, and the last financial year was a nadir when it comes to development activity. Things will pick up from here. A few of the #planning interventions announced might lead to some incremental improvements as well.
But we remain an eternity from having the capacity to deliver the types of housing the ideologues at Department of Transport and Planning would like to see, let alone the market accepting it, at the volumes required.
It's no surprise that greenfields will continue to make up a large proportion of new homes for the forseeable future. It's also no surprise that policies invented by bureaucrats on Spring St with no experience of actually delivering homes to the market will fail to deliver real-world outcomes.
🤔The focus remains on the wrong priorities, and homebuyers will remain in the cold until the emphasis changes to things that will work.