A huge increase in the amount of land being released for new residential lots has been revealed in the Urban Development Insitute of Australia’s 2015 State of the Land report.
The report shows that in 2014 there was a national increase in the number of greenland residential lots released for sale of an average of 30 percent from 2013 .
The largest jump in the number of lots released for sale was in Melbourne, where there was a 60 percent increase from 2013, with an additional 4,791 lots released.
Significantly, the size of the lots being released has also fallen, with an 11.4 percent drop since 2009 bringing the median lot size to 474 square metres.
The Urban Development Institute of Australia lauded the increase in land availablilty as good news for home buyers and developers. However, experts such as Dr Michael Buxton, RMIT professor of environment and planning, have identified many problems with city fringe development. These include lack of access to jobs, infrastructure, amenity and poor public transport and the associated negative environmental impacts from car dependency.
The report was undertaken by the Institute with Charter Keck Cramer and Research4 using data from the National Land Survey Program.
