Last week, the federal government’s own advisory body, the National Housing Supply & Affordability Council (NHSAC) released its 2025 State of the Housing System report, which forecast that only 938,000 dwellings will be built nationwide by mid-2029, 262,000 dwellings short of Labor’s National Housing Accord target of 1.2 million new homes over five years.
NHSAC also forecast that new housing supply will remain below population demand over the five-year National Housing Accord period, with Australia’s housing shortage projected to worsen by 79,000 dwellings:
The Housing Industry Association (HIA) has released its forecasts of dwelling construction to 2030, which also suggest that Australia will badly miss Labor’s 1.2 million housing target, which requires 240,000 homes to be built each year.
As illustrated above, annual dwelling starts are forecast to top out at almost 213,000 in 2028, and begin to fall again a year later.
The HIA forecasts that Australia will build about 210,000 homes in 2030, and it will continue to complete a similar number until 2035.
Over the five-year Housing Accord period, the HIA forecasts that only 986,000 will have commenced construction, with only 945,000 homes expected to be completed.
The following chart plots the NHSAC and HIA dwelling forecasts against the Albanese government’s 240,000 annual housing target:
HIA Chief Economist Tim Reardon warned that Australia’s housing shortage would become “more acute until we exceed that rate of home building at 240,000 homes a year in a sustained way”.
Recall the NHSAC’s sensitivity analysis, which showed that if Australia’s population grew by 15% less than forecast over the next five years, then Australia’s projected shortage of 79,000 dwellings would turn into a surplus of around 40,000 homes:
NHSAC’s modelling proves that the primary solution to Australia’s housing shortage is to reduce net overseas migration to a level below the nation’s capacity to build housing and infrastructure.
Regrettably, the Albanese government has chosen to accelerate immigration:
As a result, the housing crisis and rental shortage will worsen.
