It was a failure of feasibility.
Two years on from much-lauded #missingmiddle reforms, just 3,333 of the promised 112,000 #housingtargets homes hold an approval.
This is not hindsight. I wrote early about the likely outcomes in February 2025 (and again in April and again in September), being:
📉 the 112,000 homes would be missed the day the policy was announced 📈 apartment end prices, then needinging $19,000 per m2 and now higher, being beyond ordinary buyers 📉 minimal net dwelling gain, because of knockdown-rebuilds of single homes
The subsequent 19 months played out precisely as I anticipated, compounded by relentless cost inflation and three RBA rate rises this year alone, with a fourth tipped for next week.
Rezoning costs a government nothing; actually delivering something costs a developer (and end consumer) everything.
13,308 dwellings sit in the low and mid-rise pipeline, of which apartments are roughly half.
Apartment projects were 10 per cent of applications; renovations of houses and dual occupancies were 86 per cent.
University of Sydney professor Peter Phibbsput it bluntly: small apartment blocks in cheaper parts of Sydney are simply not feasible.
Density in well-located suburbs is not the problem. Cost is, and no #planningreform has gone near it, anywhere in the country.
You cannot solve an affordability crisis by unlocking only the housing people cannot afford.
✅ Every reform should be tested against one simple question: does it deliver a #familysizedapartments an average household can buy?
If not, then either: a) cut the charges, building and compliance costs that push new apartments to eyewatering prices, or b) focus on releasing sites and housing typologies that stack up
Waiting for costs to ease is not a strategy – they won’t.
Apartment approvals already sit 35 per cent below the long-run average and applications 51 per cent below, pointing to 23,000 apartments a year against 36,200 at the last peak.
🤔Two years on, this is the clearest proof yet that rezoning cannot cure a feasibility problem.
How can our politicians keep saying a theoretical pipeline is policy “working as intended”? Working for whom? Certainly not the families that want to live in affordable homes in Sydney.