The October 2015 State of the States CommSec Report has ranked NSW number one in economic terms underpinned by housing activity, says the Urban Taskforce.
“Clearly NSW is doing incredibly well against its ten year average in many economic measures,” says Urban Taskforce CEO, Chris Johnson. “NSW has top ranking in four indicators: retail trade, population growth, housing finance and dwelling starts but this is a measure of improvement against past trends rather than actual performance.”
“NSW achieved 13,418 dwelling commencements, while the smaller state of Victoria achieved 17,383 commencements. NSW appears to be doing well because the past 10 years dwelling commencements have been very low compared to Victoria’s impressive performance.”
“The need for more dwellings in NSW is emphasised by the Department of Planning & Environment’s Sydney Metropolitan Development Program results for last financial year which recorded 27,348 dwelling completions against a target of 33,200 a year.”
“There is no doubt that the housing market is booming in NSW but our concern is that even in these boom times dwelling completions are not reaching the average required over a 20 year period.”
“CommSec also has NSW number one for population growth at 1.35% but this is behind Victoria’s 1.68%. The reason for the NSW ranking is that the growth is improving while Victoria’s is slowing down.”
“The Urban Taskforce is very supportive of the current state of the NSW economy but our concern is that even in these optimistic times the number of dwelling commencements or completions is below the two decade average required to meet Sydney’s housing growth of 33,200 new dwellings a year. We should be above the average in these boom times but we seem to be down by 5,000 dwellings for Sydney.”
“The Greater Sydney Commission will be the key to lifting Sydney’s housing production and to ensuring that most approvals for new dwellings become real projects. The current economic optimism needs to carry on for a number of years to catch up with housing supply.”
