Home builders could be facing a massive influx of projects if a proposal from the nation’s peak business group to overhaul residential zoning laws goes through.
Ahead of their latest report discussing the sorry state of the current Aussie housing market, the Business Council of Australia called on government officials to make major changes to the nation’s longstanding zoning laws to allow for more high-density homes to be built.
According to Council chief executive Bran Black, these “imperative” changes would allow home builders to put forward plans to boost housing supply that would be managed by state governments, providing certainty for industry investment.
“We need state and territory governments to unlock more land for more homes in cities and towns across Australia so we can fix Australia’s housing supply crisis,” Mr Black said.
“These changes need to allow for greater density and height near good transport services, while at the same time protecting the quality of life, green space and heritage of an area.”
Is this a blatant cash grab by developers looking to stuff more renters into properties? Sure, but with the housing market seemingly set to outprice Aussies on an average hourly for the foreseeable future, they do make some good points for easing the pressure put on builders and buyers alike.
Mr Black said that Aussies only had to look across the ditch to similar changes carried out in Auckland for an example of how rezoning overhauls helped to alleviate housing stress in New Zealand’s most populous city.
“In 2016, Auckland, rezoned three-quarters of residential land and a massive increase in home building followed,” Mr Black said.
“They’ve now shared a report showing that this has contained the cost of housing in the long run, approving affordability, with rents at least 26 per cent below what they would have been without the rezoning.”
And Australia is no stranger to bending the zoning rules either when it comes to squeezing in more homes in some of the nation’s fastest-growing suburbs, with states like NSW and Victoria taking a similar approach to unlock more supply.
Mr Black called out the rezoning in Sydney in particular that places high-density homes in areas well-connected to train services and metro stations as a “good start”, but said there was “so much more to do there to meet demand”.
“Put simply, we need to build enough homes where people want to live, so until we fix that problem, it will be very hard to hit our housing targets—building a home in the right place is as important as building it at all,” Mr Black said.
“South Australia is a good example for consistent zoning, with a single consolidated approach across the state—this makes a big difference when it comes to home builders getting housing projects off the ground.”
Can tradies get it done?
According to the council, these changes would play an instrumental role in clearing the way for builders to make good on the government’s ambitious promise to deliver 1.2 million homes by 2029.
But with construction’s chronic labour shortage sending costs sky-high in recent years, does Australia even have the tradie numbers to capitalise on the changes?
The answer is a resounding no if a recent All Hands on Deck report by the Housing Industry Association is to be believed.
According to their findings, the residential workforce will need to grow by at least 30 per cent to meet the Accord’s goals over the next five years – equating to roughly 83,000 additional tradies.
And if the deficit wasn’t plugged up soon, Executive Director Geordan Murray said that number would only climb.
“To achieve the target, an average of 240,000 homes must be built annually—a level that has only been approached twice in Australia’s history,” he said.
“This means a significant boost in the number of chippies, sparkies, plumbers, brickies and concreters, to get these much-needed homes out of the ground and to lock up.”
According to the Director, significant challenges still remained barring the workforce from growing, despite the best efforts from both state and federal governments.
“Creating career opportunities for the local workforce should be a priority, however, this alone will not solve the tradie shortage,” he said”.
“Skilled migration is the other key lever that the government can pull in the short term to address the immediate shortage of tradies.
“The time for business as usual solutions has passed, and we need ‘all hands on deck’ and coordinated government actions to address the chronic shortage of tradies.”
