Queensland is only building one new home for every 4.3 new residents.
The shortfall, revealed in a report by Access Economics yesterday, came after the Australian Bureau of Statistics confirmed Queensland was the second fast growing state in Australia last year, having attracted more than 58,000 overseas migrants and 16,700 migrants.
Access Economics director Chris Richardson said the implication for housing affordability in the Sunshine State was "serious". According to Mr Richardson, the state was shy more than 17,500 dwellings. "A clash between the strength of population demand for housing and the worsening lack of supply of housing is building rapidly," he said.
Meanwhile, the median house price in Brisbane surged past $500,000 for the first time in the December quarter. Mr Richardson said this result reflected the traditional equation of supply and demand. Ironically, property inflation was tipped as the catalyst, which could halt population growth in its tracks. Chief among the reasons for the undersupply, Mr Richardson said, was the limited release of land on the urban fringe in South-East Queensland for new `greenfield sites' and the limited finance obtainable by Queensland developers in the wake of the global credit crunch. The report by Access Economics, for the Urban Development Institute of Australia, showed commercial lending for residential development in Queensland plunged 60 per cent in the past two years, compared to the national decline of 10 per cent. That coincided with the collapse of numerous second-tier lending firms, primarily based on the Gold Coast, and also Suncorp's withdrawal from the commercial lending market.
Higher house prices will make it difficult for younger Queenslanders to afford to buy their own home, pushing up the average number of people per household even further over time.
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"As the ABS has noted, lone person households are projected to increase particularly quickly in Queensland," the report says. If Queensland simply wanted to keep the number of people per household constant - at the current level 2.6 people per household - then it would need to have housing starts some 65 per cent higher than they were over the past year, Mr Richardson said. He said the social implications of the housing shortfall would include a rise in the number of multi-generational households, whereby Generation Y stayed at home until the age of 26, before housing their retired baby boomer parents in later years.
He said the challenge was for more medium density development, which was affordable. Solutions canvassed in the Access Economics report were welcomed by developers in Brisbane yesterday, who have long led calls for reduced infrastructure charges and land taxes. UDIA Queensland president Warren Harris said infrastructure charges typically accounted for 34 per cent of residential development costs. "This cost is passed onto the buyer and it has a direct impact on affordability," Mr Harris said. The report suggested the government foot the bill for improved infrastructure in the outer, greenfield suburbs.
"There is less housing and demand in area where there is a lack of efficient transport, employment opportunities and access to other social services and community infrastructure," the report says. "This in turn means a lack of incentive for developers to convert land in those areas into housing even if there is sufficient land release." In order to achieve a happy medium, Mr Harris called for a development taskforce to be established in Queensland. "This problem is so dire and so immediate we need an immediate response, therefore we are calling for an industry recovery taskforce to be established," he said."We need members from state government, local government, and the development industry, and if necessary federal government, all talking and negotiating on proper outcomes for the housing industry."