we knew this would not create much new supply in the foreseeable future.
This is because stamp duty savings alone were never going to bridge the #market #demand – #feasibility gap.
Seven months on, the #evidence is clear: 🔻 only a small number of people have used the concessions, and 🧓 those who have are mostly wealthy downsizers
So much for young people the Premier supposedly wants to getting into #housing. Ironically (but not unexpectedly) subsidising those who probably didn’t really need it. 🤡
💰Stamp duty incentives are definitely needed to assist OTP sales, and this may have tipped a few more into buying who may otherwise have not. But we are a long way from stimulating significant new housing supply, especially against the purported publicly stated aims.
As much as the State Government pretends things are working, the truth is that housing #commencements have continually dropped since the #housingstatement in September 2023. The pipe dream of 80,000 homes per year gets buried further and further.
We have #policy disconnected from #reality, which is pushing young people out of the housing market further instead of bringing them into it.
Until the Premier, Minister for Planning and Department of Transport and Planning accept that you can’t force buyers to buy expensive high density apartments, expect the #housingsupply situation to deteriorate further.
Young people, familes, and those on median incomes are not buying multi-$million apartments around train stations.
As Linda Allison says in the article: “Industry can’t ‘magic’ homes out of thin air; the conditions have to be right and the numbers have to add up,”
“Even with this extended concession, the hurdles are too high, and too many.”
I urge the State to re-focus its energies on speeding up feasible, #attainable housing supply wherever it can instead of continuing these follies. Before it is even later (because it is already too late).
Richard Temlett Leonard Teplin 🎗️ Brendan Coates UDIA Victoria Grattan Institute Charter Keck Cramer The Age Daniella White