The Housing Industry Association has released a new report, Housing Australia’s Future.

Tim Reardon, HIA’s principal economist said over the past 15 years Australia’s housing market has been dominated by a persistent under-supply of housing - the underlying cause of the rapid acceleration in prices and ultimately Australia’s housing affordability crisis.

Mr Reardon said the excessive cost of supplying new housing lies at the core of the affordability challenge.

“In 2016, Australia built a record number of 230,000 new homes and we will need to maintain this rate of annual supply for the next 30 years if we are to meet future housing needs,” he said. 

HIA NSW’s executive director David Bare, who lives in Mount Pleasant, said given its proximity to Sydney, the Illawarra is forecast to continue to grow at a significant rate. 

He said this meant support for additional housing needs to be continually maintained by state and local governments, particularly in terms of looking at the range of housing product than can be brought into the region. 

“We’ve seen this week at a state level the announcement of a medium density housing code,” he said.

“I think that’s a real opportunity for areas such as the Illawarra. Instead of just looking at whether you’ve got multi high-rise type apartment blocks or detached homes, moving into more low-level, medium density development.

“It’s more accepted by residents, but it also ensures we’re increasing density in places that we would need it, particularly around the city.”

Mr Bare said the HIA report’s core message was that supply is critical to affordability, but not the only answer.

“But the rate at which we need to build to meet underlying demand remains at a high level,” he said. 

“And we’ve only built at that level for a few years… We were under-building for so long in NSW, and we saw that in the Illawarra.

“So it’s things like finding ways to bring developments to market much quicker. We’ve seen how many delays there have been around areas like West Dapto. 

‘There’s also getting infrastructure in place in a timely manner.”

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