Current at: 01 September 2011
HIA, the voice of Australia’s residential building industry, today released the HIA - JELD-WEN Housing to 2020 report. The report provides projections of the underlying demographic demand for housing and the number of dwellings to be completed over the next nine years at a national, state, and local government area.
"Housing to 2020 is the most comprehensive report available regarding the homes Australia builds compared to what we need to build," said HIA Senior Economist, Andrew Harvey. “The report's projections highlight just how large the aggregate housing supply challenge facing Australia has become."
“HIA estimates that Australia will require in the order of 1.6 million homes over the nine years to 2020, but if we build at the average rate of the last 20 years many areas of the country will have a critical housing shortage by 2020. Under such a scenario the cumulative national shortage could approach 500,900 dwellings,” said Andrew Harvey.
"Clearly that situation can't be allowed to happen and it doesn't have to happen. Substantial policy reform is required, and can be achieved, to ensure Australia begins reducing its shortage of dwellings, rather than accumulating a larger one," said Andrew Harvey.
The greatest housing supply challenge is in New South Wales which, under HIA’s medium build-rate scenario
, could reach a dwelling shortage of 155,700 dwellings by 2020 in the absence of sustained policy reform.
Under the same scenario, the projected dwelling shortages at 2020 in the other states and territories are: 104,200 dwellings in Victoria; 112,000 dwellings in Western Australia; 91,800 dwellings in Queensland; 24,600 dwellings in South Australia; 12,500 dwellings in the Northern Territory; and 1,400 dwellings in the ACT. Tasmania could reach a projected surplus of 1,300 houses by 2020.
Seven of the twenty LGA’s with the largest projected housing shortfall by 2020 are in Western Australia, six are in Queensland, five are in NSW, and two are in the Northern Territory.
