Are we missing the real crisis?

It’s a fact we cannot ignore. Australia is in the midst of a national housing shortage which has the potential to cause major repercussions including driving new house prices up, affecting affordability.

Despite all the uplifting stories emerging in our news media about the property market’s resurgence, the bigger concern not being addressed is the shortage of homes.

Alarmingly, experts are predicting by 2010 the nation will be short of 200,000 homes, a fact we can no longer ignore.

The shortage is driven by Australia’s population explosion. The Australian Bureau of Statistics recorded a 1.9 per cent national population growth during the 12 months ending December 2008 and WA alone recorded a 3.1 per cent increase, the highest of all the States and Territories.

We have been too caught up worrying about the economy, and as a result we’ve neglected to address this very real problem.

It is fairly well known that these issues partly stem from the layers of bureaucratic red tape authorities have put in place which property developers must fight their way through to achieve any sort of progress.

It is hard and expensive to develop and approvals around it need to be simplified and improved.

Governments need to remove the hurdles put in front of property developers so that smoother processes can be put in place and more homes can be developed to meet the demand.

And this revamp of the system is a must do.

Housing stocks need to be replenished otherwise we risk driving up the cost of new homes affecting affordability.

I must emphasise the importance of keeping homes affordable because if we don’t, we risk imposing a stalled market. We need to keep the market ticking over.

People need to be aware of what the bigger issues are here, the small statistics emerging about property may ease our anxiety in the short-term but the issue still remains, we have a serious problem with the shortage of homes in our country.