The Government's take on housing supply

The Government's take on housing supply

The Federal Government's National Housing Supply Council released their second State of Supply Report this week. Probably the most important finding of the 228 page document was the estimate that nationally there is a cumulative undersupply of 178,400 dwellings.

The greatest undersupply in dwellings was found to be within New South Wales (57,600) and Queensland (56,100). The states with the smallest estimated shortfall in housing were found to be: South Australia (100) and Tasmania (1,000).

National estimated cummulative housing undersupply:

NT- 10,100

ACT- 500

NSW- 57,600

VIC- 22,700

QLD- 56,100

SA- 100

WA- 30,200

TAS- 1,000

The National Housing Supply Council estimates that by 2014 the gap between supply and demand will increase to 308,000 dwellings nationally.

The report also looks at how the individual states have gone in meeting their housing requirement. During 2009, not one state met their requirement for cumulative housing demand. In the worst cases the Northern Territory only met 38.8% of its demand, New South Wales met only 81.1% of its demand and Western Australia met 81.5% of its demand. Nationally, there was a shortfall of 14.7% in housing to meet demand during 2009.