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Sydney block drought eases

PUBLISHED: 05 Mar 2013 PRINT EDITION: 05 Mar 2013

Gift Article: 100

This financial year 5500 lots will be released across Sydney. Photo: Rob Homer 

Robert HarleySydney’s chronic shortage of new housing lots is beginning to ease, helped by a changed property environment andthe work of the O’Farrell government.

In the worst year of the last decade, 2008-09, less than 1500 lots were produced across Sydney.

This financial year production will top 5500 lots, according to the Urban Development Institute of Australia. By 2014-15, production will exceed 8500 lots.

The UDIA’s chief executive in NSW, Stephen Albin, said confidence was returning to the developers in Sydney.

“Other markets interstate are weakening and a lot of the money is coming back to Sydney,” he said.

“It is partly driven by the state government.”

NSW Planning Minister Brad Hazzard said his government was streamlining housing supply and delivering a “can-doculture” both in state agencies and local government. “As business confidence has returned to NSW, housingproviders are starting more developments than have been undertaken in many years,” he said.

In the year to the end of January, over 36,900 new homes –largely apartments but also houses – were approved inNSW, reported the ABS on Monday. It is the highest level of approvals in any 12 months since the tail of the city’shousing boom in 2005.

Mr Albin said government initiatives, like the ministerial housing supply task force to co-ordinate state infrastructureproviders, were having an effect.

The state government’s land operation, UrbanGrowth, is also ramping up its production.

Still to come is the outcome of the government’s call for developer nominated, as opposed to planner scheduled, landreleases and later this year a new planning system.

Mr Albin said he hoped the new planning system would address some of the barriers which had restricted

development in NSW for 50 years.

One problem is the fragmented ownership of land on the outskirts of Sydney and the high price expectations of thosewho own those 5, 10 and 20 ha lots.

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 Another is timeliness and cost of infrastructure like sewerage.

 A third issue is the “prohibitive” level of taxes and levies on new housing which “distorts market performance,generates uncertainty and is inefficient”.

“Developers cannot bring housing product to market at suitable price points,” reported the UDIA.

The Australian Financial Review

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Topics Politics/NSW Politics, Property - Residential/Infrastructure & Town Planning