Despite lofty promises, only 172,000 homes were completed in 2023. The lowest annual number of completions in the past decade. What’s the scam?

The scam is that despite the Government’s Housing Accord aspirational target of 1.2 million new dwellings built by June 2029, a mere 18 months after it was announced in October 2022, it is running well behind schedule.

The National Housing Supply & Affordability Council (NHSAC) released its inaugural annual ‘State of the Housing System‘ report on Friday, 3 May 2024, and already a picture is emerging of a struggle to reach the Government’s target. According to their modelling, the reality is a shortfall of 300,000 dwellings:

Gross new housing supply will total 903,000 over the period [to 2029].

Rather than ramping up towards the needed 240,000 new dwellings each year, only 172,000 dwellings were completed in 2023 – the lowest annual number of completions in the past decade.

The report paints a grim short-term picture, noting that “the overall shortfall in new supply relative to new demand will add to the already significant undersupply of housing in the system. As a result,

housing affordability is expected to deteriorate further over the forecast horizon.

Which is all the more reason, as we opined in his closing piece of the Housing Hunger Games trilogy, that measures to reduce excess demand should also be accelerated to help alleviate the pressure on the housing system.

Songbirds and snakes. How to end the ‘Hunger Games’ of housing affordability

This post was originally published on Michael West.