Stockland boss says house and land supply is needed ahead of return of migration

With house and land packages seeing a surge in popularity, bolstering housing supply ahead of the restart of post COVID-19 immigration could improve housing affordability, according to the new Stockland managing director Tarun Gupta.

Gupta, who spent 26 years at Lendlease, has just taken over from Mark Steinert at Australia's largest listed residential house and land developer.

“A lot of the heat currently is in established home prices, which is where price increases are coming through,” Mr Gupta told The Australian.

He added that ensuring supply would stop prices rising too high, which had been creating affordability problems and stopping people getting into the market.

“We think supply needs to come in and kick in at the moment,” he said.

“Over time, especially as immigration starts to come up in future years, there’ll be more demand, right across the market. Supply is very important to moderate prices, because affordability is good at the moment because of low interest rates,” he said.

“Even though we don’t have migrants coming to the country at the moment we have had a lot of Australians returning back to the country who have supported, probably more the established home market, but that is still driving a halo effect on the market that we service,” he said.

He said outer suburban and regional markets were drawing people looking for larger homes and better amenities, partly due to the pandemic, which allowed for flexible working from home.

“We are selling a very large proportion of our homes to owner-occupiers who are really making the choice to come and live in our community."

But buyers are being forced further and further out, Richard Rhydderch, general manager of residential communities NSW for developer Stockland, told Domain.

“There’s a real lack of supply in greenfield areas, and that will continue until the government releases more land or accelerates rezoning,” he says. 

“And with people being pushed further from the centres, we need better infrastructure and access to jobs, which requires significant investment from local and state governments.”

At the moment, Stockland is allocating buying opportunities to people who register their interest as soon as a new parcels of land are released.

It is not unknown to take 1000 requests for 20 blocks in the first three minutes.

"There’s a lot of people being constantly disappointed,” Rhydderch said. “And that isn’t good to see.”