Brisbane apartment shortfall grows up to 1000 dwellings a year

The shortfall in apartments needed in Brisbane is about to get even worse. ALL THE DETAILS

Brisbane’s apartment pipeline has struggled to keep up with demand since 2019.

Brisbane’s apartment pipeline is struggling to keep up with demand since 2019 with expectations it will fall short of up to 1000 dwellings annually required by the South East Queensland Regional Plan.

According to the Brisbane Apartment Snapshot released by the Property Council of Australia on Wednesday the city has lagged behind in apartment supply which is critical to housing the 30 per cent of Queenslanders who rent.

Urbis director Paul Riga, who conducted research for the report, said that Brisbane would fall short of its medium and high-rise targets required by the South East 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,” he said.

“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.”

Mr Riga said nationally apartment projects were taking longer than ever.

“The time taken to develop an apartment building (approval to completion) increasing from 45 months in 2019 to 75 months in 2024,” he said.

“This protracted development time adds risk to projects in an already volatile environment.”

Jess Caire, executive director Queensland, Property Council of Australia.

Property Council of Australia Queensland executive director Jess Caire said governments 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,” she said.

“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.”

The Property Council’s Time for a Fair Go report, which was released on Tuesday, showed these taxes have cost Queensland nearly 33,000 homes, and between 23,129 and 37,920 jobs.

“Taxes targeted towards international capital are particularly destructive in the current environment,” she said.

“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.

Ms Caire said in July they 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,” she said.