Sydney's housing shortfall to double by 2014: Urban Taksforce

Sydney’s undersupply of housing is forecast to double to 80,000 by 2014, according to the Urban Taskforce. 

The organisation, which represents building developers, is forecasting this increase on the back of what it calls “NSW’s plummeting rate of building approvals”. 

According to ABS statistics, during the June quarter Victoria approved 19,000 new homes, while NSW approved just 10,000. 

Urban Taskforce chief executive Aaron Gadiel estimates a current 46,000-home deficit, up from a deficit of 36,000 homes in 2009. 

According to Gadiel, NSW already produces less new housing than any other state or territory per head of population, with the ABS figures suggesting NSW’s performance relative to other states and territories is getting even worse. 

“NSW’s private sector home approval rate is plummeting at more than three times the national rate and the value of approved new business premises is in free fall,” Gadiel says. 

“We’ve now seen three straight months of data where the NSW private sector home approvals have trended down by more than 4% a month.

“Since March, that’s added up to a 12.6% decline in new private sector home approvals.” 

Gadiel says this is more than double the rate of decline suffered by Victoria in the same three months – 5.6% – and more than three times the rate of decline seen in Western Australia, at 3.2%. 

“And it contrasts with Queensland’s improvement, in trend terms, over the same period – by 0.7%.”

Gadiel says NSW’s problems aren’t just confined to new housing. 

“The value of non-residential building approvals in NSW has fallen by 57% since March,” he says. “In the same period, Victoria’s has increased by 5%.”