Think-tank says brace for a surge in demand
Millennials are set to drive the next boom in the property market of New South Wales over the second half of the decade, according to a government think-tank.
A white paper from NSW’s Productivity Commission revealed that the state has seen “a dramatic increase in the number of young adults living with their parents,” which could lead to the gap between housing supply and demand closing towards the middle of the 2020s.
However, the white paper warned that the state faces an undersupply of housing as more millennials start entering the market in the second half of the decade.
“People are saying, ‘Temporarily, the housing problem doesn’t seem to be as bad as it used to be,’” productivity commissioner Peter Achterstraat said in a presentation, as reported by the Australian Financial Review. “That is deferring the problem, because one day people are going to need houses. It’s going to get worse if we don’t do anything.”
The think-tank made several recommendations to improve the state’s housing supply, including the introduction of an urban development program that “monitors and reports on unmet housing demand, capacity for growth, and alignment with government objectives,” and implementing a “system of incentives to encourage all local governments to deliver on housing targets.”
