Perth’s rate of apartment completions has collapsed to its lowest since records began in the 1980s, while the proportion of house-and-land package completions has reached an all-time high. A new Property Council report released today says despite the state government’s target that 47 per cent of new developments in WA should be “infill” in already established areas, it only reached 31 per cent in 2022 – the rest being sprawl on the urban fringe. Government projects are guzzling workers needed for housing, the property industry lobby says.
Credit: Getty Only 1.1 per cent of Perth homes are apartments, compared to Melbourne’s 3.8 per cent and Sydney’s 6 per cent.
To meet the housing targets set by the National Housing Accord, which aims to alleviate the national crisis, WA would need to be delivering five times the number of apartments per year it currently is, the Sky High report said. But completion rates for infill developments are headed south; while about 2366 apartments are being completed this year, projected completions for 2025 fall dramatically to just over 600. Starts this year and last year are also extremely low.
There are more than 10,000 apartments approved for WA but effectively on hold and unable to be constructed. The report said the major issue was simply that projects were not financially viable; that, post-COVID in greater Perth, the cost of delivering an apartment was generally higher than the market was willing to pay, so projects simply did.