The West Australian’s Post

Recently, a concept was proposed to combat the Real Estate crisis affecting Australia. The idea involves relaxing planning rules within a 3-5 km radius of a train station to allow for more intensive construction of up to 4 properties on a single residential lot, with size being a crucial factor. The proposal could see between 6 to 8 residential, small homes in an 800 or 1000 m² light or combination of two smaller lots. Local councils would be bypassed, and building plans could be certified by independent agents, fast-tracking approval. Factory-built homes could be trucked in and craned onto sites, keeping up with housing demand. Read more about this radical concept and the attached article. #RealEstateCrisis

Update from recent Ontario housing news—the province saw a 23% increase in housing starts in May, with 7,062 new projects initiated, mostly multi-residential units. Despite this, many municipalities claim the CMHC undercounted new builds, causing them to miss out on millions in provincial funding. The discrepancy affects the Building Faster Fund, which rewards towns hitting housing targets. Municipal leaders urge CMHC and the province to correct the data and revise funding criteria based on building permits. Let's push for accuracy and support housing growth. Let’s build 💪 (https://lnkd.in/g4aF3csQ)!

Policy isn’t applied in an economic vacuum… Concerns continue to grow every day that the NSW Government is struggling to understand the feasibility of apartment developments in Sydney right now. Land, Construction & Labour Costs, Fees & Taxes and Lender requirements all stack up to make building an apartment in Sydney rather expensive. If that cost to develop exceeds the price people are willing/capable of paying in a particular location then the feasibility of that project becomes high risk for a developer. TODs are a good policy, increasing density close to establish transport hubs, is considered global best practice. However every time the government tries to squeeze something for free out of a development, the price of that something gets passed on to the future buyers in that development. Once the price tips over the feasibility threshold it’s likely the development won’t proceed. In a housing crisis that requires more homes to be built, pricing private developers out of the market when Government needs them to build over 95% of new dwellings is not going to help the crisis. Government should be listening to industry on how to make TODs work. Even then the feasibility will still be challenging for many projects in the near term. A renewed commitment from government to greenfield development is a must or NSW will continue see annual completion rates at levels way below what is required to stabilise housing affordability. https://lnkd.in/g3R9SYAC

20% increase in housing starts in Greater Victoria (1,572) from January to May 2024 vs the same period last year (1,312). Yet a 92% decline in City of Victoria housing starts with only 20 units vs 247 last year. https://lnkd.in/gsrv-sYv

Delay housing = add cost to that housing. I know lots of people who insist we need more affordable housing, and yet don't care in the slightest about the forces that delay approvals for new housing for months or even years because they don't grasp what those delays and uncertainties will do to spike the cost of housing production. Which, in turn, makes it less likely that the project in question can be competitively priced, or officially affordable, or deeply affordable, or practical as supportive housing, or whatever. Toronto, ON... h/t HousingNowTO

Solve The Housing Crisis By Building Smaller, Darker, Higher Homes? https://lnkd.in/e-j7RzEU Housing affordability is one of the biggest pressures facing the Australian community and the Government has committed to building 1.2 million new, quote well-located homes across Australia by mid-2029. This is all but impossible, on current trends, and of course housing pressures have been exacerbated by super-high migration. The NSW Productivity and Equality Commission just released a report: Review of housing supply challenges and policy options for New South Wales. In summary, New South Wales needs to build 377,000 homes by mid-2029 under its housing targets. The Productivity and Equality Commission recommends Higher-density zones around train stations would double in size and extend further into Sydney's eastern suburbs and north shore. They are recommending design standards be relaxed to allow the construction of smaller apartments without access to parking, storage or direct sunlight. They say government spending priorities would shift from infrastructure projects like new metros and motorways, to projects that support rapid housing supply. And there would be more migration opportunities for construction workers, to address a critical skills shortage. Even then I suspect targets wont be met. But to me, by not talking about the demand side of the equation – driven by too high migration they are missing the elephant in the room. As a result, they are proposing we build higher, smaller darker homes – as high-rise living is forced more widely on the population. This risks further degrading the standards of living for many. True while some may be willing to pay less to get anything to live in, the trade-off and compromises are enormous. https://lnkd.in/g3P5Nmmb Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://lnkd.in/gFYzZZHe Find more at https://lnkd.in/ggbzzf9m where you can subscribe to our research alerts Today's post is brought to you by Ribbon Property Consultants.

This week I spoke to Gus McCubbing at The Australian Financial Review about how planning delays are impacting upon the supply of housing in Victoria. Whilst planning is only one part of addressing the critical housing shortage, it is important to shine a light on how slow the process can be. In an environment with higher interest rates and construction inflation, delays can be the difference between projects finishing or being abandoned mid way. Tim Gurner of GURNER™ Group who was also interviewed for this piece, estimates that less than half of the 51,000 new dwellings approved in Victoria last year will actually get built. This is despite the Victorian State Government targeting 80,000 new homes a year. We need a reformed planning system that is up to the task of making good decisions, on an increasing number of medium density projects, in much quicker timeframes. #housingcrisis #missingmiddle #betterplanning

The NSW government's audit has identified 44 sites, but they are being revealed in stages, to avoid distorting the market, Housing Minister Rose Jackson said. COMMENT: Buildable sites are being released "in stages to avoid distorting the market"????? Those in government have been manipulating the supply of housing for decades and this is further proof of it. People are homeless and being drowned by high rents and housing costs and those in government don't want to release buildable sites???? Who are they protecting??? Existing property owners??? Refusing to release these buildable sites to protect the market is just like NIMBY Zoning!!!!! Release the buildable lots NOW!!!!

B.C. government hails housing targets as success, but singles out Oak Bay for slow start >> https://lnkd.in/gBynPQ-H The Township of Esquimalt is poised to complete the housing targets set out by the province well in advance of the mandated deadline. The five-year housing target for the township is 754 net new completed housing units; this is the total minimum number of required to comply with the Provincial Housing Target Order issued June 25. Esquimalt currently has just over 1,000 units under construction. In addition, there are more than 800 units going through rezoning and 1,000 through the development permit process.

Our mission has always been to tackle the housing crisis sustainably and support the homebuilding industry to deliver more homes, including affordable housing. That’s why we were thrilled to provide data and analysis to the The Times to investigate the Governments ‘Grey Belt’ Golden Rules and their impact on site Viability. We used our software to automate the viability assessment of a number of potential grey belt sites in the London green belt and varied the affordable housing requirements to see the impact on Viability and housing delivery. And our findings were very interesting. With a 50% affordable housing requirement, 80% of small-scale Grey Belt sites posed a ‘significant financial risk’ to developers. As you would imagine, reducing the requirement to 35% significantly improved the number of ‘Viable’ opportunities. The most interesting outcome was that reducing the affordable requirement had the overall effect of increasing the delivery of affordable housing. In this case 35% of something is more than 50% of nothing. We believe that in order to deliver more homes and especially more affordable homes the ‘Golden Rules’ must be flexible. If the requirements render sites unviable then no homes will be delivered at all, be it market or affordable. If you’re interested to learn more, then head to the article on our website, linked in the comments! #Housing #SustainableDevelopment #HousingCrisis #PropTech #PropertyInvestment #Viability #Homebuilding #Housebuilding #Development #PropertyDevelopment #SMEDevelopers https://lnkd.in/eYcUtFvh