Wednesday, 21 December 2011

Housing shortage set to keep growing

Housing shortage set to keep growing

abc
finance reporter Sue Lannin and staff, On Wednesday 21 December 2011, 16:31 EST
Australia's housing shortage has worsened despite falling property prices and is set to keep growing, an official report has found.
The National Housing Supply Council says the gap between supply and underlying demand in Australia widened by 28,200 homes in the 2010 financial year.
New South Wales and Queensland have the largest shortfalls.
The council says the total shortage stood at nearly 187,000 dwellings in 2010 and was expected to reach 215,000 for the 2011 financial year.
Council chair Owen Donald says not enough homes are being built by either the private or the public sectors.
"We simply haven't been producing as much new housing and we've had additions to the number of households over the years," Dr Donald said.
"That's been particularly the case since about 2005, when the rate of population growth exceeded the rate of additions to housing stock." Underlying demand, or the number of people who need housing, is no longer linked to actual demand, or orders and sales, which are driven by economic factors such as business and consumer confidence, house prices and affordability, the council says.
The new Minister for Housing and Homelessness, Robert McClelland, admits more needs to be done to boost housing construction and availability.
He says the Government has invested $450 million in a housing affordability fund and provides more than $1.2 billion a year to the states as part of the National Affordable Housing Agreement.
"There is still a lot to be done to address the inescapable fact that growth in underlying demand for housing is outstripping supply," Mr McClelland said.
"The report confirms that access to affordable housing is a challenge for many Australians.
"We need to make sure housing supply matches the needs of our changing population - that is why the Government is making an unprecedented investment to increase the supply of affordable housing across the nation."

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