The impossibility of the 1.2 million housing target was spelled-out in black and white by Charter Keck Cramer:
Australian states and territories will need to deliver record levels of new dwellings over this 5-year period.
For context, at peak years of supply in FY 2017, there were around 220,000 new dwellings delivered in Australia. During this time both the greenfield and apartment markets were extremely active, and this was underpinned by foreign and local investors and lower tax settings.
Critically, we were also at a very different point in the housing market and economic cycle and did not have a costs of delivery crisis preventing the feasible delivery of new product…
It is our view that a 5-year window to rebalance the housing market, whilst well intentioned, is simply not realistic. Many changes at the planning level alone will take 1-2 market cycles (7-10 years minimum) to flow through once implemented.
This is also assuming that the housing market is not dislocated as it currently is, which means it will almost certainly take even longer to occur…