Welcome to the final, abbreviated version of our newsletter for 2009! As we look back over the last year and breathe a sign of relief now that the global financial crisis is largely behind us, it is sobering to realise that the effects are still being felt by developers, who are now forced to deal with the downturn’s legacy.

That legacy, of course, is a much tighter debt securities market. Because of the new restrictions on lending, developers now struggle to secure the finance required to build multi-unit housing developments. Approvals for such developments are now at historically low levels, a situation which we can ill afford given the chronic undersupply of housing in Australia. While the government is making an effort to boost social and community housing stock by funding a number of development projects, this will provide only 20,000 new homes. With 250,000 homes actually required, that still leaves a massive shortfall; and with so many barriers to the provision of new developments, it seems highly likely that Australia’s housing shortage can only get worse in the future, with the issue of affordability becoming increasingly significant.

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