Developers crucial in housing crisis as prices continue to boom

As house prices continue to boom, buyers are stampeding into previously overlooked areas looking for a foothold in the housing market. We must make it easier for developers to help them.

views of cranes building high rise apartment blocks on the South Brisbane skyline.

We cannot afford to keep demonising developers as housing prices across Queensland appear to have no ceiling, with values soaring in some suburbs by more than 40 per cent in just one year.

Buyers are stampeding into previously overlooked suburbs and regions, desperately seeking to get a foothold in a market now effectively closed to millions of younger Australians.

Today we reveal the extraordinary price rises that are now impacting once neglected suburbs far from inner-city Brisbane – such as Woodridge in Logan – as well as in the regions.

Fourteen suburbs in Queensland have recorded double-digit house price growth over the past three months, with nine of those in Townsville, four in Central Queensland and one in the Mackay-Isaac-Whitsunday region.

Millions of dispirited young Australians believe themselves effectively locked into a lifetime of renting.

There are many uncontested reasons for the extraordinarily high price of an ordinary home.

One is low interest rates, which have been with us since around 2009, and which kept mortgages manageable until the latest round of rate hikes began in mid-2022.

Yet the last three years of higher rates have made no dent in housing affordability, and few predict any dramatic change in house prices regardless of what moves the Reserve Bank may make this year.

The other largely uncontested reason behind house prices is limited government release of new land.

There is just not enough development-ready land to meet our housing needs in this state, or in this nation.

Where there is land available, planning, zoning and approval processes, both before and after construction, are far too slow and complex.

In this context, Queensland might be said to offer a glimmer of hope.

The newly installed LNP government has already established the Queensland Ministerial Housing Taskforce, which is designed to combine the major housing portfolios of the government, streamline and remove roadblocks to new housing projects and, hopefully, send a message to developers that they are welcome in this state.

Queensland is also land rich – even in the heavily populated southeast, where there are thousands of hectares of land that is suitable for development.

And, perhaps most importantly, newly installed Premier David Crisafulli has a local government background.

It’s the third tier of government where most developers begin their interactions with bureaucracy, and Mr Crisafulli is well aware of the intricacies involved in getting successful housing projects up and running.

Social housing is crucial, and government-backed housing estates have long been an important variable in the Queensland housing equation.

But our housing needs have, historically, been mostly satisfied by the robust energies of free enterprise.

Developers have not always been seen in a positive light in this state.

But it’s the vision of men such as Toowoomba’s Clive Berghofer, who has developed over 10,000 blocks of land since he began his career in the early 1960s, which has made Queensland the success it is today.

We need a return of that Berghofer vigour and energy, bolstered by our state government, if we are to give Queensland youth the opportunity to once again turn into reality the Great Australian Dream.

OUR HEARTS GO OUT TO LA

The scenes out of Los Angeles are devastating to watch.

Queenslanders are no strangers to natural disasters, and our hearts go out to the Californians who have lost their homes in the intense wildfires ravaging Los Angeles.

In Palisades alone, officials believe more than 5000 homes have burnt to the ground during the disaster so far.

That is about half the 10,000 structures believed to have been razed as of late yesterday.

County sheriff Robert G Luna said officials were still getting into neighbourhoods where hundreds of homes burned, and they would “hopefully not discover too many fatalities. That is our prayer”.

But he admits it is a crisis, and in a crisis you don’t know what to expect.

There will be time for critics to analyse what happened, and if anything could have been done by authorities to prevent such a horrific outcome, when this crisis is over.

Responsibility for election comment is taken by Melanie Pilling, corner of Mayne Rd & Campbell St, Bowen Hills, Qld 4006. Printed and published by NEWSQUEENSLAND (ACN 009 661 778). Contact details are available at www.couriermail.com.au/help/contact-us

Originally published as Developers crucial in housing crisis as prices continue to boom