Seven steps to fix Tasmania’s housing supply
As Hobart’s residential vacancy rates hovers below one per cent – the lowest in the land – a new Property Council blueprint aims to stimulate discussion and inform policy for Tasmania’s future housing supply.
The statistics are startling. Hobart’s house price growth outpaced all other capital cities in 2017, surging by 17.3 per cent and far surpassing second placed Melbourne’s 11.3 per cent rate of growth.
The cost of renting in Hobart has also increased. Median asking rents in Hobart grew by 15.1 per cent between March 2017 and 2018. Canberra recorded the second highest rental price increase of six per cent.
In June, Hobart posted the lowest residential vacancy rate in the country, with a 0.7 per cent vacancy rate well below the national average of 2.3 per cent.
All this amounts to Australia’s least affordable city, where 29 per cent of wages are spent on rent.
Last week, the Property Council released a blueprint for decision makers to fix the issues at the heart of the state’s worsening housing shortage.
Bright Wightman, the Property Council’s executive director in Tasmania, says the problems at the root of the housing shortage are “multi-layered and require coordinated, insightful planning to properly address”.
Removing the regulatory handbrake: Seven steps to fix Tasmania’s housing supply contains mission-critical strategies to increase housing supply:
- Accelerate approvals
- Clear the TasNetworks bottleneck
- Streamline Taswater’s processes
- Finalise the Tasmanian Planning Scheme
- Encourage inner city housing development
- Develop the Glenorchy to Hobart transit corridor
- Take advantage of the Hobart City Deal.
“At the top of the list is Tasmania’s convoluted approval process,” Wightman says. He says this can be addressed by legislating approval timeframes across all regulatory bodies involved in the planning and building process.
“Navigating the approval process is an unnecessarily difficult task for developers and without clear timeframes, the process can become a long and drawn-out affair. Aside from holding back delivery of housing to the market, costs associated with delays are incurred by developers and ultimately drive up end prices and lower investment appeal.”
Wightman says the initiatives outlined by the Property Council will take time to implement, “but when completed will go a long way towards ensuring Tasmanians are able to access suitable and affordable housing into the future”.
Download Removing the regulatory handbrake: Seven steps to fix Tasmania’s housing supply.