Master Builders ACT (MBA) and the Property Council of Australia (PCA) have released damning data that shows “a stark reality” of housing in the ACT, and a Demographia report shows Australia’s appalling rankings internationally.

MBA CEO Michael Hopkins said the MBA Australia forecasts released on 7 February show the ACT will experience the sharpest fall in residential dwelling approvals compared to all Australian states and territories.

The approvals are set to fall from last year’s 5,865 dwellings to 2,660 in the 2022-23 year.

Mr Hopkins said the lack of suitable housing failing to meet the needs of current and future Canberrans and “has become a social and economic crisis which requires urgent attention by the ACT Government”.

While he welcomes the ACT Government’s appointment of a Coordinator General for Housing, it will be “set up to fail” unless there’s also allocation for the responsibility for planning controls and delivery of land release.

“Canberra, like many cities across Australia, is currently in a fierce competition to attract skilled workers to meet the needs of local employers,” he said.

“Lack of suitable and affordable housing is cited as one of the major reasons by the MBA members why they can’t attract skilled workers to Canberra to live and work on local construction projects.”

Australians feeling ‘years of inaction’

PCA chief executive Mike Zorbas said the country is feeling the effects of “years of inaction”.

A new report from the PCA was launched in Federal Parliament today, 8 February, drawing together data and community sentiment to “paint the starkest picture yet” of affordable housing in Australia.

The ‘A stark reality: Part one in a thought leadership series on housing choice and affordability for a growing Australia’ found 81 per cent of Australians believe affordable housing supply in their communities is scarce.

Housing affordability was ranked the second biggest concern for Australian residents after cost of living which topped the list.

Forty-five per cent of Australians believe the government should arrange incentives to encourage developers to build affordable housing stock for our key workers including nurses, teachers, and police officers.

Additionally, over half of renters said they have no other options for housing, and a third believe they will be unable to purchase a house within the next five years.

Australia’s housing affordability international ranking

Out of 92 international housing markets on the Demographia International Housing Affordability, 2022 Edition (DIHA), all five major Australian cities ranked in the 19 most unaffordable housing markets.

The latest DIHA studied housing markets across eight major countries: Australia, Canada, Ireland, the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore, China (Hong Kong), and New Zealand. This Edition uses data from the September quarter of 2021.

Note: The DIHA uses the ‘median multiple’ (a price-to-income ratio) to rate housing affordability.

Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney were all classed as ‘extremely unaffordable’ with a combined median multiple rating of 8.0.

According to the report, these five major housing markets have been ‘severely unaffordable’ since the early 2000s.

Australia is the only country in the study which had multiple cities that failed to rank any better than ‘severely unaffordable’.

Australia scored increasingly high in housing unaffordability rates, with Sydney ranking as the second most unaffordable of the 92 evaluated cities, with a median multiple of 15.3.

Hong Kong was the only city with a higher unaffordability rate than Sydney.

In the 18 years of the Demographia reports, no market apart from Hong Kong has reached Sydney’s level of unaffordability.

Melbourne was the next severely unaffordable Australian city on the ranking, placing fifth with a median multiple of 12.1.

Adelaide ranked 13th, one place below London, with a median multiple of 8.0.

Brisbane ranked 16th with a median multiple of 7.4.

Perth scored a median multiple of 7.1, placing the WA capital in 19th place.

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