Housing Availability and Affordability Crisis in Queensland

Arnold Development Consultants calls on the Queensland Government to urgently attend to the crisis in housing availability and affordability in the State. The below UDIA Land Report for South East Queensland points to land supply shortages across the region and in particular within several local government areas. Deficits in land supply and infrastructure are one of the most significant contributors to the crisis in housing availability and affordability in Queensland. The SEQRP Urban Footprint can be and needs to be urgently expanded to ensure adequate land supply moving forward to help address housing availability and affordability.

Another major contributor to housing availability and affordability is approvals processes for new dwellings. Approvals processes in the Queensland need to significantly improved to reduce approval timelines, improve development certainty, reduce red tape, and decrease approval costs. So Arnolds also call on the State Government to urgently review all legislation relating to approval processes.”

LAND REPORT FLAGS EMERGING SUPPLY ISSUES

Source: Urban Development Institute Australia (UDIA)

11^th December 2019

The report card on the SEG Regional Plan is out, Revealing some warning signs of land supply shortages across several councils.

Specific areas where available supply has been identified as a concern when assessed against the four-year supply benchmark:

• Gold Coast – 1.7 years of approved lot supply
• Sunshine Coast – 2.4 years of approved lot supply
• Redland Bay – 2.5 years of approved lot supply
• Brisbane – 3 years of approved lot supply
• Moreton Bay – 3.7 years of approved lot supply

We look forward to the Queensland Government’s response on these issues and remain very keen to work with government and councils as well as the Housing Supply Expert Panel to see these matters resolved.

The Housing Supply Expert Panel acknowledged some concerns in it’s message regarding the report stating ‘The Panel Acknowledges that some geographies show emerging issues in relation to the benchmarks which is a key objective of the monitoring program…. It is important that both levels of government remain agile and responsive to both land availability factors to ensure ample tie for analysis and discussion with all stakeholders to understand and adjust policy responses accordingly.’

In short the Land Supply and Development Monitoring Report shows that:

• In 2018/19 SEQ dwelling approvals were lower than the average annual benchmark (projected growth to 2031)
• Expansion area dwelling approvals are ahead of consolidation approvals
• Between 2016 and 2019 houses comprised 57% of approvals, medium density dwellings to three story’s 22%, and high rise 21%
• Against the regional plan benchmark there is 3.9 years of new uncompleted lot approvals (overall in SEQ) slightly under the four-year supply benchmark
• Against the regional plan benchmark there is 7.1 years of multiple dwelling approvals (in consolidation areas) meeting the minimum benchmark
• Lot approvals are below the four-year supply benchmark in Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Redland Bay, Brisbane, and Moreton Bay
• An average of 371 hectares of industrial zoned land was taken up in SEQ annually between 2011 and 2018
• Around 9,100 hectares of industrial zoned land is available
• Between 2016 and 2019 approximately 60% of dwelling approvals were in the SEQ consolidation area, which meets the expected share of dwelling growth to 2031 as identified in

Key improvements to the methodology since 2018 include:

• Methodology refinement has confirmed a 16% reduction in estimated planned dwelling supply in expansion (greenfield) areas and a 27% reduction in estimated planned industrial land across the region
• Updated dwelling supply, lot registration, sales, industrial data
• Updated Queensland Government dwelling projections
• New Current Intent to Service consideration to identify residential land that is currently committed to be serviced based on: residential development approvals; residential preliminary approvals; priority infrastructure areas; existing and future sewer connection areas; infrastructure agreements; priority development areas.
• New sales volume and price data for house-land packages and vacant land per square meter
• New upper and lower quartile sales price for all categories
• New realistic availability of planned dwelling supply figures for the expansion areas, using: new Current Intent to Service mapping; updated take-up figures for major growth areas.
• Updated planned industrial land figures using new developability rules from the Developable Area best practice research in 2019
• New estimate of the realistic availability of panned industrial employment supply figures using updated planned industrial land layer and refined set of economic and developability criteria
• New and more accurate measurement of net growth as part of Measuring Development best practice research
• Finer grain reporting of dwelling density in Changes in Housing Type section.

Image Source: Scott Hanselman
https://www.hanselman.com/blog/HowToUseGoogleEarthOrVirtualEarthToVisualizeANewHouseLotPart1.aspx