The Property Council of Australia and Urbis have released new research showing that Brisbane’s apartment pipeline has struggled to keep up with demand since 2019 – and is expected to continue falling short for the foreseeable future.
The independent research shows the challenges of delivering higher density apartments, which require large institutional investment and are critical to housing the 30% of Queenslanders who rent.
The Director of Urbis stated that Brisbane would fall short of its medium and high-rise targets required by the Southeast Queensland Regional Plan by between 800-1000 dwellings annually over the period to 2027.
“It is clear from the data that Brisbane has lagged behind where it needs to be in terms of apartment supply and unless something drastic changes, will continue to fall short in terms of delivering high density attached product.
“Worryingly our analysis is potentially optimistic given the widely publicised headwinds being experienced in the multi-residential sector with a third of Brisbane’s supply at a moderate to high risk of not being developed by 2027.
“We are seeing nationally that apartment projects are taking longer than ever with the time taken to develop an apartment building (approval to completion) increasing from 45 months in 2019 to 75 months in 2024.
“This protracted development time adds risk to projects in an already volatile environment.”
Paul Riga, Director, Urbis
Executive Director of the Property Council of Australia Queensland stated that the government needed to rethink how it leveraged the institutional capital required to make large scale apartment projects feasible.
“As we can see from this data something significant needs to change if we are going to get close to our housing targets.
“Feedback from investors is that a lot of high-density residential development in Brisbane simply isn’t feasible due to a combination of declining productivity, constrained infrastructure delivery and the impost of government taxes.
“Taxes targeted towards international capital are particularly destructive in the current environment. These taxes have choked the influx of institutional capital into our state – the very capital which is needed to do the heavy lifting to respond to the housing crisis.
“In fact, our Time for a fair go report shows these taxes have cost Queensland nearly 33,000 homes, and between 23,129 and 37,920 jobs. In July we welcomed the Treasurer’s announcement of a post-election tax review; however, since then there has been little detail or clarity around what the review would entail, despite the Property Council’s best efforts.
“As our data shows, we simply cannot respond to the housing crisis and the level of supply we need without significant reform and any post-election tax review undertaken by any of the major parties should be the springboard for that reform.”
Jess Caire, Executive Director, the Property Council of Australia
This election, the Property Council is calling upon both the Government and Opposition to commit to a tax review that will be conducted independently of Treasury and chaired by an independent tax expert, include appropriate peak bodies in setting the Terms of Reference, and include a commitment to no new or increased taxes or charges across the entire property sector.
