Huge land bank puts squeeze on buyers
‘We release land in a staged manner to meet demand because it would not benefit anybody to flood the market”
said Stockland’s General Manager Andrew Whitson.
Wouldn’t benefit anybody Andrew? Well perhaps it should be re-written as ‘wouldn’t benefit shareholders‘. It’s easy to get all hot under the collar when you read statements like this, but we must remember that developers just play the system. Governments at all levels are ultimately responsible for the ethics they encourage with their upside down tax system.
Developers get away with such statements because few in government or the public understand how land and the community interact economically.
The Age article goes on to state a very conservative 70,000 blocks of vacant land exist in Melbourne. That is 5 years worth of land supply. With planning laws speeding up here in Victoria, there should be no reason why at least half of this land couldn’t be sold to meet our burgeoning needs. With Brumby having re-zoned over 230,000 sites in the last 2 years, we feel the 70,000 figure could be much higher.
Back to the argy bargy, Sarah from South Yarra states in the vibrant comments to the article:
So Stockland owns 16,000 vacant lots in Victoria,in the City of Whittlesea alone there are 23,000 residential house blocks ready to be built on and Government developer VicUrban is sitting on a further stockpile of 25,000 housing lots listed for development across Melbourne. And other developers presumably are sitting more lots. VicUrban, the government, ie the taxpayer operates on a commercial basis.
It is abundantly clear that there is sufficient housing lots available and lack of developing these is contributing to the lack of affordable housing. Not the touted increased migration of domestic and international new arrivals. The state government and developers are obviously working together to engender anxiety and push their own vested interests.
It is not sustainable for Melbourne to sprawl and clearly doesn’t need to. Some honesty from the government, developers and the HIA would be novel and refreshing.
The rubbish they keep coming out with is unbelievable. How stupid do they think people are?</blockquote
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