It would not be an exaggeration to say the lack of new housing has never been such a big problem as it is right now.
Affordability is just about non existent – it says it all that it’s almost impossible to buy an average home for much under $1 million in Campbelltown.
Less than 20 years ago I recall a local politician complaining he could not find one under $300,000, also in Campbelltown.
They are building million dollar homes in Claymore for goodness sake, but I doubt any of them will be in the price range of a first home buyer.
Yes, there are some affordable houses around here, but because they are not immune to price hike pressures they are becoming less and less common.
The irony in all this is that housing has been the major policy focus of both the state government and the federal government since the pandemic.
They seem to be moving on a lot of fronts, from supply to quicker approvals and financial support for first home buyers, but unfortunately these tweaks dot seem to be making much of a difference.
I do not know why that is, but many of the experts will tell you it’s because the politicians, and the fat cat bureaucrats that advise them, are ignoring the elephant in the room.
And not just any elephant in any room, but what these industry experts believe is the cause of our current muddled housing approach.
You’d expect the words “too much regulation’’ to be next, and yes, that is part of the reason new housing is in the doldrums.
The biggest factor though is a combination of government and council charges, taxes, fees, stamp duties, and so on, starting from the very start of a bid by a developer to put housing on land somewhere that – which is getting the land rezoned in many cases.
Red tape, well, that’s all part of it, but by the time a first home buyer gets anywhere near one of the new homes built by this developer the final cost has hit the roof, so to speak.
Councils now will only approve large scale housing estates if they get anywhere from $20,000 up to $50,000 or more per house for infrastructure.
And that’s just the start, with more and more government fees and charges all the way to the final transaction of exchanging contracts.
There’s no other way to describe all this than as an addiction to taxes by all levels of government.
It’s surprisingly really that governments haven’t done any modelling to see how much more houses costs because of this; they seem to do modelling for anything that moves these days.
But that’s it really, and until they address this aspect, housing prices will continue to skyrocket, making them more and more affordable.
And their housing assistance measures, as laudable as they are, will continue to make as much impact as throwing a pebble into the ocean.
The Albanese Labor government over the last 4 years has run a massive immigration program, at the same time have not been putting federal money into infrastructure.
An example of this is the Walker Corporation’s planning proposal for 15,00 homes at Appin was rejected on appeal, because there was no infrastructure.
If the federal government is going to bring millions of migrants to this country and not spend money on infrastructure, then the housing crisis is going to get much worse.
The main reason for the high cost of housing is the fact hat the supply of land is controlled by the major developers. Prior to 2000 the average cost of the land represented some 10-20% of home costs. Now despite lots being reduced to average 300 sm the cost of lot now is from $ 575000 to $600000 representing 60% of home costs. When the start of expansion of Campbelltown in the 1970 s Tom Uren and the Whitlam government financed the State bodies to extend services to the hew areas in a way that was orderly and land prices remained a constant 10-20 % and Campbelltown became the fastest growing shire in Australia without land inflation.
If governments want to do the same they should study the policies of Tom Uren and LandCom