Supply pressures forcing land prices up: HIA-CoreLogic report
Australia’s residential land market showed signs of increased supply pressures during the closing quarter of 2016, as demand for land continues to outstrip supply, according to the latest Housing Industry Association-CoreLogic Residential Land Report.
The report is another indicator of the challenges the government faces in its battle to make housing affordable. The federal budget to be unveiled on May 9 is expected to address the affordability problem.
HIA senior economist Shane Garrett said the sharp dip in volume of residential lot transactions during the December 2016 quarter had placed pressure on land prices.
“With land being such a crucial ingredient in new home supply more challenging cost conditions in the market for residential land in 2017 will make the battle to improve housing affordability more difficult,” Garrett said.
“We need to make it easier and less costly to deliver additional stocks of shovel-ready residential land to market. This can only be done by tackling planning delays in zoning and subdivision, releasing government-held land and improving funding mechanisms for housing infrastructure.”
Eliza Owen, CoreLogic’s commercial research analyst, said the continued fall of sales volumes against sustained value increases suggests demand is outstripping the available supply of vacant residential lots.
She said this was particularly evident in Melbourne, where the value of lots experienced the highest growth of all capital cities in the year to December (16.3 percent).
Sales volumes in the city fell 15.2 percent in the six months to December 2016.
“The median lot value in Melbourne is still lower than Sydney, which has consistently maintained the highest median lot price of the capital city markets. With a median vacant lot price of $455,000, this accounts for approximately 45 per cent of the median Sydney house price at the December quarter, assuming the median house was on the median lot. This median lot value has increased a staggering 65 per cent over the last five years,” she said.
“With housing affordability high on all government’s agenda, and an increasing concern for households, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne, more attention must be paid to how increased supply of residential land could help ease demand,” concluded Eliza Owen.
According to the latest HIA-CoreLogic Residential Land Report, the weighted median land lot price rose by 4.8 percent to $254,406 during the December 2016 quarter – 9.3 percent higher than a year earlier.
The report also indicates that the estimated number of land lot sales across Australia totalled 10,756 during the final quarter of 2016 – down by 22.7 percent compared with the previous quarter and 39.5 percent lower than a year earlier.
Based on land transactions during the December 2016 quarter, the annual pace of residential land price growth was strongest in Melbourne (+16.3 percent), followed by Sydney (+10.7 percent) and Adelaide (+10.3 percent). Over the same period, Perth’s residential land market experienced the weakest price growth (+0.9 percent) with modest land price increases affecting Brisbane (+5.4 percent) and Hobart (+3.1 percent).