THE GLOBAL TSUNAMI WARNING SYSTEM WAS IMPLEMENTED AFTER THE 2004 BOXING DAY TSUNAMI KILLED 230,000 PEOPLE IN 14 COUNTRIES. LOCALISED WARNING SYSTEMS HAD EXISTED SINCE THE 1920’S AND EXPANDING TO COVER THE PACIFIC IN THE 1940’S BUT IT TOOK A DISASTER OF MASSIVE PROPORTIONS FOR THERE TO BE A HOLISTIC RESPONSE TO THIS INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM.
What has this to do with housing affordability? Sadly, sometimes it takes a disaster to make things happen. When Perth housing prices virtually doubled a few years ago everybody was quick to point fingers. The reality is the storm had been brewing since the 1980’s and should have been predicted.
The ready supply of cheap and easy to develop land and an incredibly efficient project home industry provided Perth not only with affordable housing, but very, very big housing. The combination of this cheap land and housing and the introduction of the R-Codes, which worked against density, led to the development of a homogenous housing supply. A whole generation of Western Australian’s grew up with the expectation of owning a large home on a large lot.
To address housing affordability the obvious solution was smaller lots and they are being delivered nearly as fast as the market can absorb them, but what is next?
We are likely to see the lighter framed product, which is so common on the east coast, and a reduction on the reliance on fill to create flat blocks in favour of those that flow with the natural landscape. This doesn’t mean the end of brick, rather the effective use of brick as a thermal mass in sustainable housing.
Affordability for medium and high density is also going through its own mini revolution with bedrooms being traded off for bathrooms. The popularity of 1-bedroom-1-bathroom and 2-bedroom-2-bathroom product is a step change from the 2-bedroom-1-bathroom norm.
Once we have exhausted size and construction techniques, where is the new price point advantage?
The reality is that construction savings are finite, after that we need to get serious about community expectations – what do people expect up front when they move into an area and what are they prepared to wait for? A train? A park? A school?
Hopefully none of the above as historically we have managed to deliver outstanding outcomes – the industry is resilient, innovative and competitive and will continue to rise to the challenge of affordability as long as that is a government priority.