Experts are calling for planning policy to ‘unbundle’ parking spaces from apartments to reduce housing costs and alleviate street parking woes.
To evaluate the sufficiency of off-street parking for apartment households, RMIT University researchers conducted a survey of over 1,300 apartment residents in Melbourne, Sydney, and Perth.
Dr Chris De Gruyter, the lead researcher from RMIT’s Centre for Urban Research, said the survey found two-thirds of households owned the same number of cars as their assigned parking spaces.
However, 20 per cent of households had too many allocated parking spaces, while 14 per cent did not have enough. Among the households surveyed, 13.4 per cent did not possess a vehicle.
Dr De Gruyter said the disparity in off-site parking for apartments was due to residents not having a say in how many parking spots they required when renting or purchasing an apartment.
According to Victoria’s minimum parking requirements, every one and two-bedroom apartment must have at least one parking space, and apartments with three or more bedrooms must have at least two.
“We found in our study that people living in larger apartments tend to have an oversupply of parking because of this policy, which means they’re paying for a space they’re not using,” Dr De Gruyter said.
He estimated that the cost of unutilized off-site parking, with each spot valued at approximately $100,000, is causing residents to lose over $6 billion.
“This oversupply is not just an inefficient use of space, it is exacerbating housing affordability issues,” he said.
“Meanwhile, apartment households with an undersupply of parking are forced to park on the street, competing with visitors in the area.
“It is very clear that there is actually plenty of apartment parking – it’s just allocated incorrectly.”
Dr De Gruyter urged state and local governments to incorporate the option of unbundled parking into their planning policies to address the unequal allocation of off-site parking.
He said the objective of unbundling parking is not to deprive residents of parking but to provide them with the freedom to possess or lease parking spaces based on their requirements.
“We can choose the number of bedrooms we want in our homes, yet we have no say in how much parking we need,” he said.
“We want people to have the option to choose not to have parking instead of it being imposed on them. Similarly, those who wish to have additional parking can have this.”
While uncommon in Australia, there are a few recent apartment buildings that have opted for unbundled off-street parking, such as Melbourne Square, Indi City Sydney, and Arklife in Brisbane.
These complexes have separated parking from apartments, offering residents the choice to purchase or rent parking spaces independently.