For many Australians, purchasing or renting a home has never been more difficult.
Australia faces a significant housing crisis: there simply aren’t enough properties for people looking to put a roof over their heads.
In NSW, for example, the rental vacancy rate has hovered between 1.3 and 1.8 per cent for the last 12 months, which is below the 3 per cent that indicates a healthy market.
This low vacancy rate shows the supply of houses falls short of demand.
Unfortunately it’s expected that Australia’s housing shortage won’t improve any time soon, which is disappointing for thousands of people looking to rent or purchase a home.
In fact, there’s an expected shortage of 106,300 houses over the next five years, according to government agency Housing Australia.
Not just in NSW, but across the nation.
The enormous demand for housing far exceeds the available supply of affordable residential properties.
People are struggling to find suitable accommodation for many reasons, but largely because there aren’t enough new houses entering the market.
Building more granny flats is a good way to boost housing supply for two reasons:
- Demand is high
- Building a granny flat is faster and cheaper than building a house
Largest capital cities contain untapped granny flat potential
A new report identifies hundreds of thousands of suitable sites for building granny flats.
Three companies in the real estate, town planning and analytics sectors joined forces to find granny flat development opportunities in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.
Archistar, Blackfort and CoreLogic assessed every residential block in the east coast capital cities, to determine how many properties have the potential to host a two-bedroom granny flat that’s self-contained.
They identified more than 655,000 suitable sites!
The cherry on top?
Researchers discovered that many of the sites are highly accessible:
- Over 36% of the sites are close to a train or light rail station (within two kilometres)
- 17% of the sites are close to a hospital (ideal for health care workers)
Here’s a breakdown of the potential sites by each capital city on the east coast:
- 242,000 in Sydney
- 230,00 in Melbourne
- 185,000 in Brisbane
Dr Benjamin Coorey, co-founder of Archistar, said that building more granny flats is one effective solution to the housing crisis, because the planning and construction process is streamlined.
“Since granny flat developments leverage existing lot areas and require no changes to town planning regulation, they offer an immediate opportunity to address housing shortages and affordability pressures expected in the coming five years for both buyers and renters,” Dr Coorey said.
This sentiment is echoed by CoreLogic Research Director, Tim Lawless, who believes that untapped development opportunities could help to alleviate the housing shortage in Australia’s biggest cities, while also benefiting homeowners.
“For policy makers and government, granny flats present an immediate and cost-effective opportunity to deliver much needed housing supply within existing town planning guidelines,” Mr Lawless said.
“For homeowners, the addition of a second self-contained dwelling provides an opportunity to provide rental housing or additional accommodation for family members, while at the same time, increasing the value of their property and potentially attaining additional rental income,” he said.
We’re one of the best granny flat builders in Sydney, Central Coast and Newcastle
Our licensed and insured builders are committed to transparency and take pride in every project.
You can expect:
- Upfront pricing
- Timely completion of projects
- Reliable and respectful tradespeople
- 6-year structural guarantee on workmanship
We offer customised designs, layouts and plans. In fact, many of our standard inclusions are optional upgrades with other granny flat builders.
Call us on (02) 8798 9858 or fill out this form to get an immediate quote.
We’ve also published a blog post that explains what you should consider if you’re building a granny flat in NSW.
