Stocktake: 1590 Melbourne projects on the project database

Time for a quick stocktake.  As of the 14th of May, there were 1590 Melbourne projects on the project database with a total 145,694 dwellings contained within them.  

This represents an average of 91 units per project across metropolitan Melbourne.

In two and a half years the number of projects in Melbourne with 4 or less floors has doubled, and then some.  Back in November 2015, there were 208 projects with a floor count or 4 or less with a sum total of just over 7,000 dwellings.

Fast forward to today and there are 486 projects which have a total of just under 14,000 dwellings.  This represents a reduction in the average size of a project in 2015 with 33 apartments per project to 28 apartments per project in 2018.

The number of projects has more than doubled but the total number of dwellings is on 100% growth - in 2015 I only looked at up to 4 levels, however in hindsight I should have filtered out up to 3 levels as well because this average size reduction, I suspect, is linked to more and more projects that have been added to the database in areas which are zoned general residential (up to 3 levels in height).

This lack of 'Goldilocks zone' type development in the middle and outer ring of Melbourne is often bemoaned by commentators yet 363 of the 486 up-to-4-level projects are outside the local government areas that are deemed inner city by Plan Melbourne.

The City of Melbourne, City of Yarra, City of Port Phillip are all part of the inner region as defined by Plan Melbourne.

Similarly, regardless of how many floors a project has, there are now 1143 projects outside the Plan Melbourne-defined inner city area with 68,386 dwellings across all of them.

While there is justifiably questions over what represents inner-Melbourne, using the regions from Plan Melbourne conform to local government areas - which is intrinsically linked to the development industry as the councils are the authorities, in most cases, who assess then either approve or reject projects in the overall pipeline.

For those interested in the numbers which relate to different floor heights across Melbourne, if we use 10 floors as an arbitrary cut off there are 461 projects  with 10 or more floors that include 99,874 dwellings right across metropolitan Melbourne.

Similarly, the number of projects which have between 5 and 9 floors weighs in at 633 and includes 32,149 dwellings.

Lead image credit: 88 Melbourne.