Mirvac reintroduces ballots amid high demand for land

Demand in the marketplace has forced Mirvac to reintroduce a ballot system for purchases for the first time in five years as a number of buyers miss out.

Mirvac will for the first time in five years introduce a ballot system for land releases within its Menangle development ‘The Village’ after hundreds missed out on Saturday.

Demand in the marketplace has forced Mirvac to reintroduce a ballot system for purchases for the first time in five years, as a number of buyers miss out.

The property developer ­offered its first Sydney land release in five years to the market on Saturday at The Village in the southwest suburb of Menangle. All 28 lots were quickly sold by ­appointment, causing hundreds of prospective buyers to miss out.

Mirvac’s general manager of residential in NSW, Toby Long, said it was obvious a ballot system would be needed to manage the high levels of demand for further land releases through stage one of the 40ha project.

“We anticipated this first release at The Village would be well received but nothing quite on this level,” Mr Long said.

He chalked the interest down to a shortage of available land in the city’s outer ring, which was also a driver of the new land buyer frenzy in 2015 that caused people to camp out for days in the hope of securing a lot.

“We introduced the ballot system to moderate extremely high demand at our Brighton Lakes community at Moorebank and at Crest in Gledswood Hills in 2015,” Mr Long said

“We are now in a similar position where demand far exceeds our ability to supply.

“There is a very real shortage of land right across Sydney.”

New home building has become red hot following a slew of federal and state government initiatives to encourage construction in the post-COVID recovery.

The federal government’s popular HomeBuilder scheme wrapped up last month, with almost 100,000 applications for new builds received days ahead of the April 14 cut-off. A 5 per cent deposit guarantee was also offered in the October federal budget to 10,000 first-home buyers who committed to building.