Half-a-billion dollars will be poured into unlocking land and accelerating residential infrastructure across New South Wales to combat housing supply and affordability issues.
The plan to be included in June 21’s NSW budget is aimed at “supercharging” the state’s housing stocks by helping to deliver “hundreds of thousands of new homes”.
It includes a $300-million investment to help councils deliver shovel-ready infrastructure projects that enable new home development in Sydney and key regional areas.
As well, an additional $89 million will be invested in providing faster planning assessments, $69.8 million to accelerate the rezoning of key housing precincts to make more land development-ready and $33.8 million to create a 10-year regional housing supply pipeline.
The budget allocation announcement follows the NSW government unveiling a $780.4-million plan to trial a shared equity scheme to help bolster home ownership.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet said housing supply, ownership and affordability were some of the state’s biggest challenges.
“This is about getting keys in doors with this commitment supercharging housing supply to help people across the state get one step closer to home ownership,” he said.
“We know one of the biggest constraints on housing supply is a lack of supporting infrastructure like water, roads, sewers and parks.”
NSW Treasurer Matt Kean said the strategic investment in ramping up the state’s planning system would allow more homes to be built on existing and new land at the pace needed to meet demand.
“Prioritising planning assessments for new homes will make it faster for high quality planning proposals to be approved,” he said.
“We are anticipating hundreds of thousands of homes will be delivered sooner, through faster state and local rezonings and approvals.”
UDIA NSW chief executive Steve Mann welcomed the $500-million budget investment but said it was long overdue and would only “go some way to addressing housing affordability in the short term”.
“We need to see results quickly, with dwelling approvals down 24 per cent from the supply peak,” he said.
“Improving housing affordability requires a long-term plan for investing in development-ready land and improving the slowest planning system in Australia.
“We need to spend the next two years developing solutions that will enable consistent funding to avoid the feast or famine cycle that we have been in over recent years and a permanent fix for the planning system.”
Property Council of Australia NSW executive director Luke Achterstraat said the budget initiative was much-needed but stressed its success would depend on the quality of its delivery and speed of its implementation.
“We are some 100,000 homes short of where we need to be in NSW so it is timely,” he said.
“Too many times we have seen governments squib the opportunity to make lasting change to our planning system.
“But if we get the implementation right, we can generate a new productivity super-cycle that will improve the living standards of future generations.”
Together with the investment in a shared equity trial—matching the federal government program—the budget housing initiatives total more than $1.2 billion.
Under the shared equity scheme, the NSW government will contribute up to 40 per cent for a new property or up to 30 per cent for an existing property purchased by eligible buyers.
Up to 3000 spots will be available each year for two financial years.
Participants will be key workers as well as older singles aged over 50 and single parents with children under 18. They must have a minimum deposit of 2 per cent of the purchase price.
