Celsius Land – July Update 2021
The Champion Lakes Local Structure Plan is progressing. Two pre-lodgement meetings were held with the City of Armadale in July resulting in some final amendments prior to lodgement. Whilst we were aiming to lodge the Plan in July, these pre-lodgement meetings have provided valuable feedback which will assist the approval process once the Plan has been lodged.
Works are continuing on the Piara Waters Lifestyle Resort which Celsius Land is project managing. With July being our wettest month in many years, high ground water levels are impacting the speed of development and will continue to over the coming months when the sewer is constructed.
Celsius Land is continuing its search to acquire new development sites. Over the past 12 months we have looked at over 50 sites of which only one has resulted in an acquisition. The market is currently highly competitive with many developers looking to restock following strong land sales over the past 12 months. The strong real estate market has also resulted in vendors having high price expectations with many not appreciating that increased construction costs have largely offset any increases in retail land pricing.
Land Shortage in WA over the Medium Term
In June, the Urban Development Institute of WA released its research showing that land supply is becoming a critical issue for Western Australia. Some of the key issues they highlighted were:
- there are very few large, serviced land parcels available for future master planned developments;
- navigating town planning and environmental approval to rezone and structure plan land takes a significant amount of time;
- the four growth corridors of Perth (north-west, north-east, south-east and south-west) are estimated to have between 4.1 and 8.7 years of land supply remaining.
The current land supply is a critical issue and it is not unheard of for the rezoning and structure plan process to take 4-8 years to complete on land that is identified for development. There is a strong correlation between low land supply and increasing house prices in Western Australia, so it is important that our industry and the state government prepare for this shortage now.
The UDIA has released a report suggesting a range of solutions to this problem, which I won’t go into, however you can view the report here.
Regards,