A study has shown that housing affordability and supply in South East Queensland are in serious jeopardy with serviced land availability falling well-below critical benchmarks.
Information comes from the peak body for the property industry, UDIA Queensland.
Institute CEO Kirsty Chessher-Brown warned of substantial price rises, reduced housing choice for buyers, and infrastructure shortfalls in coming years.
“Put simply, insufficient land supply means fewer houses on the market and higher prices,” she said.
The good news for Logan was that a land explosion in this area wasn’t bundled in with other fast-growing areas such as the Gold and Sunshine Coasts and Redland.
However, Ms Chessher-Brown said servicing land fast enough to keep pace with population growth was a challenge that the industry, state government, and councils needed to solve, and urgently.
The State Government mandates that every council area should have four years of approved lot supply to ensure that the target of an additional 30,000+ dwellings needed per year, every year, are delivered in the South East.
Logan wasn’t performing poorly, but Ms Chessher-Brown said at the heart of the problem was a major lack of coordination between
council planning schemes and the State Government’s Regional Plan, as well as red tape, numerous and conflicting zone overlays, and politics.
“All of this is getting in the way of industry being able to provide the housing that people want and that they can afford,” she said.
“It’s not a straightforward issue and we recognise there are many factors preventing land stocks from reaching the desired levels to comfortably cater for demand.
“However, all parties need to work together to make it faster and simpler to deliver land.”
Ms Chessher-Brown said Queenslanders had not been prepared for the challenges that our region faced.
“People want to live here, and they are moving here. We can’t stop that, but we must react by planning and delivering the housing people want,” Ms Chessher-Brown said.
“Households are diverse with no one type, age, family structure or life stage so the housing options available should reflect that. Right now, older people, young families, and first home buyers looking for smaller homes are locked out of many suburbs.”
Ms Chessher-Brown said housing options were also restricted by planning schemes that dictated minimum lot sizes and made it difficult and unfeasible to deliver a range of housing types.
“Another key issue preventing more housing being added in existing suburbs is inaccurateassumptions about the desirability of areas councils are earmarking for development and the inability to make a project actually stack up,” she said.
The UDIA’s Research Foundation has conducted extensive research with buyers in South East Queensland to gain critical insights into housing preferences including typologies, what they want from new developments, community engagement, and their understanding of the planning system.
“Buyers in the South East have told us loud and clear that they want houses close to their friends and family at a price they can afford,” Ms Chessher-Brown said.
“Housing is a human right, and we need to get into gear to keep it affordable for every Queenslander.”
