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As housing supply dwindles, the Real Estate Institute of Australia (REIA) has put out a plea to the government to improve the national housing pipeline.
REIA president Adrian Kelly has pointed out “a chronic shortage of housing” across states and territories, marked by a significant reduction in transactions and a decline in listings through the years.
In fact, over the past five years, transactions in Victoria were reduced by 21 per cent.
In the last 12 months alone, listings in Western Australia fell by 45 per cent, he noted.
Further, while the REIA estimated the pre-COVID housing shortfall to have sat at 150,000 homes, the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NFHIC) is now forecasting a 12 per cent fall in project completions by 2022.
At the same time, demand could fully rebound by 2023, with additional pressure brought about by the increase of net international migration to 235,000 by 2024–2015.
“The supply crunch will return in force… [and] there is no current government planning process to manage this,” according to Mr Kelly.
As such, the president urged the federal and state governments to work with the industry to improve supply planning around housing development.
He’s called for “a long-term collaborative industry-government plan”.
Mr Kelly laid out five simple steps to invoke meaningful change within the industry:
- Reduce the cost of development application process
- Introduce rezoning reforms
- Improve approval times for development applications
- Introduce land release programs
- Establish a government-led mechanism for reliable data on housing demand and supply
Mr Kelly is also advising against the continued use of “excessively politicising” housing policies.
He noted: “In the rising market of 2021, this issue continues to be excessively politicised and has become a conversation of public versus private, state versus federal, young versus old, wealthy versus poor and civil society versus business groups.”
Without improvements to supply planning on a national level, the president warned the industry would continue to expect increasing property prices as supply fails to keep pace with growing demand.
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