No more empty nests: Downsizing a major key to unlock WA housing
By Peter Milne
If WA is to house its growing population, it needs more construction workers, more varied dwellings and more people willing to downsize from underutilised properties, according to a Curtin University study.
In 2015, the state’s builders delivered 32,000 new dwellings. But now they would struggle to supply the minimum 20,000 homes needed just to keep up with population growth, according to the Building the Dream report from the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre released on Wednesday.
Separate homes make up 77 per cent of WA dwellings, 7 per cent higher than the rest of the country.Credit: Ross Swanborough
From the peak rate of construction mid-last decade to 2021, 40 per cent of WA’s building workforce left the industry. While 17 per cent retired, another 23 per cent switched industries — mainly to mining and manufacturing.
Professor Alan Duncan, the Centre’s director and a co-author of the report, said a suite of measures was needed to boost the building workforce, including subsidies for new apprentices, accelerating the approval of qualifications held by overseas workers and competitive relocation packages. The measures should be targeted towards trades in the highest demand, he said, including tilers, floor finishers, cabinetmakers and carpenters.
While long queues form to view rental properties, the state is awash with homes bigger than the occupants require. There are 1.45 million spare bedrooms across the state, and many of them are not used for other purposes.
“The extraordinary rate of vacant housing capacity points to two major issues in WA housing,” Duncan said.
“The first is that we are failing to use our current housing stock efficiently, and the second is that the diversity of housing stock remains inadequate.”
The report recommends cutting stamp duty to reduce barriers to downsizing and boosting funding for social housing.
While more dwellings are needed, more of the same – the now standard four bedroom-two bathroom combination – is not the only solution.
For new builds, more of the “missing middle” – small well-located dwellings in inner and middle-ring suburbs that a state government report a decade ago identified would be in strong demand – are needed. However, limited land releases and high construction and infrastructure costs meant few have been built.
The rising demand for smaller homes is driven in part by the rise in single-parent families that need less space and have less money than two-parent families. WA now has 164,000 single-parent families, more than double the number 10 years ago, and they constitute 16 per cent of the state’s households.
WA’s standard fixed-cost building contract combined with soaring costs during COVID when demand, boosted by government incentives, caused completion to be delayed by years and builders to fail financially.
Duncan called for public projects to trial new contracting practices that balanced the needs of buyers and sellers. He also wants the state government to invest in innovative offsite and modular construction methods.
WA has remained wedded to double-brick construction that accounted for 64 per cent of dwellings built in 2023, compared to a national average of 10 per cent.
Floors are also dominated by the heaviest option, with 88 per cent of dwellings built last year having a concrete slab laid on the ground.
Nationally 43 per cent of floors are waffle pods - steel-reinforced foam blocks covered in concrete - that produce less waste and provide better insulation. There was no use of this technique recorded in WA in 2023.
Dr Adam Crowe, another author of the report, said there needed to be greater use of low-carbon building processes and recycling of material.
“The government should lead by example, setting high environmental standards for its buildings and procurement processes,” he said.
“A strong, efficient and innovative construction industry is integral to the state’s future economic, social and environmental success.”
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