Report on barriers to housing supply released

On August 30, the Housing Supply and Affordability Reform Working Party released a report on strategies to stimulate housing supply — covering issues such as land supply, infrastructure cost recovery, and land-use planning and approval processes. The report acknowledged, however, that reducing barriers to housing supply will not necessarily reduce the housing affordability problems faced by households on lower incomes. Regarding the First Home Owner Grant, the report noted that in its current form and in a supply-constrained environment, the grant ‘may not be the most cost-effective way of improving housing supply and affordability in the longer term’; it recommended that ‘consideration [be] given to better targeting the grant or even phasing out the grant completely’. The Council of Australian Governments agreed to the report’s recommendations out-of-session in July 2012. Read the Housing supply and affordability reform report.