Treasurer Jim Chalmers during a visit to a housing project. Picture: Dean Lewins
A month into a federal government push to build 240,000 new Aussie homes a year, the nation is already 74,000 homes behind.
The figures suggest a $3bn federal fund announced to reward states and territories for adding 1.2 million residences to the nation’s housing supply by 2029 will go unused, with industry forecasts suggesting the nation will miss its goal by about 200,000 homes.
Victoria is already almost 10,000 below where it needs to be after new home approvals across the state fell by close to 2000 from when the government announcement was made in August 2023.
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Australian Bureau of Statistics data released Monday show there were 166,137 new dwellings approved nationwide in the 12 months to July 31, far below the National Housing Accord goal of 240,000 homes.
The approvals data tracks homes that have been given the green light for construction, though not all will be built as homebuyers grapple with a cost of living crisis — meaning the gap is likely even larger.
Victoria had the highest number of new home approvals in the country at 52,854. But this is still thousands short of it’s 61,265 new homes annual goal under the federal targets.
Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers during Question Time at Parliament House last month.
In the year leading up to August last year when the announcement was made, there had been 54,695 new homes given the nod across the state.
When the National Housing Accord goal was announced the federal government also pledged $3bn, or $15,000 for each home the nation’s states and territories built beyond an initial 1 million homes target they upgraded.
Housing Industry Association senior economist Tom Devitt said even factoring in an uptick in demand in the coming year, their best forecasts suggested Australia would struggle to reach 1 million homes, let alone 1.2 million.
“I won’t say it’s impossible, but it’s not what we are expecting,” Mr Devitt said.
“And there will be a point where, if there isn’t a rapid and very strong recovery, where we simple won’t have the capacity to meet the government’s targets in their time frame.”
He said their forecasts made it hard to see any significant use of the government’s $3bn bonus funds.
Housing approvals show Australia is likely to fall short of its housing targets.
There was a silver lining, with a month-on-month improvement in both the national number of homes being approved, and the Victorian figure.
However, the Victorian boost came from planning nods to units — which have fluctuated wildly this year from just 209 in April to more than 1100 in July. House approvals declined month on month.
Property Council of Australia policy and advocacy group executive Matthew Kandelaars said the monthly increase wasn’t enough.
“Our national target of 1.2 million new homes should be easily attainable for a wealthy, land-rich country like Australia, but instead we’re behind the line as the starter’s gun is fired on our 2029 target,” Mr Kandelaars said.
Master Builders Australia chief executive Denita Wawn said while that uptick meant we were starting “on the front foot” delivering the national housing accord target would still be a “huge challenge”.
Victoria is set to build more homes than any other state, but it’s still not at the level the government wants it to be.
The figures come a day after the nation’s biggest housing group revealed Victoria’s planning system was so riddled with inefficiencies that it could be adding as much as $10,000 to the cost of building a new home.
The HIA National Planning Blueprint Scorecard ranked the state a two out of five and noted that without significant improvement to its planning system there was no capacity to reach housing targets set forth for the state.
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