04 October 2016
The announcement by the NSW Minister for Planning, Rob Stokes, that Sydney achieved 30,191 housing completions in the last financial year is good news but more is needed to meet population projections, says the Urban Taskforce.
“Over 30,000 completed new homes in the last financial year is an excellent achievement across metropolitan Sydney,” says Urban Taskforce CEO, Chris Johnson. “But we need to average over 36,000 new homes a year to meet the government’s projection of 726,000 required over the next 20 years. In boom times, like now, we should be producing closer to 40,000 new homes a year.”
“An analysis of individual local government area results shows a heavy concentration around a few suburbs. The City of Sydney has completed the largest number of apartments with 2,984 followed by Parramatta with 1,803. The suburbs leading in detached houses are Camden with 2,471 and Blacktown with 1,964.”
“A concentration of new homes in a few suburbs may suggest that other suburbs are not pulling their weight in terms of supporting new homes. The Greater Sydney Commission will need to analyse just which areas of Sydney should be doing more to help house future population growth.”
“The latest housing statistics confirm the big swing to apartment living with 20,572 completions being multi-unit and 9,619 being detached houses. 13,148 of the apartments are in developments with over 50 units continuing a trend to larger scale precinct wide projects.”
“The approval numbers for the financial year also look promising but previous measurements have shown that not all approvals translate to real projects.”
“Despite the growth in housing completions in Sydney there is still an affordability problem for first home buyers and a significant game changer policy is required to bring institutional funding into an affordable housing market.”
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