John Carey acknowledges WA’s density woes but backs efforts after damning housing approval stats

Housing Minister John Carey has acknowledged WA has an issue with building density housing after figures revealed just 84 multi-unit dwellings had been approved in the September quarter.

His comments come as WA was the only State to have dwelling approvals fall in the September quarter, with a drop of 2.5 per cent compared to the three months prior, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Every other State recorded an increase in approvals, with the national average at 7.9 per cent increase.

Mr Carey said despite the grim figures, WA was still getting houses on the market.

“Can I be clear, firstly for the last financial year, we obviously saw record growth in completions, the highest in eight years, 25 per cent was better than any other state, so we are doing very well in terms of completions,” he said.

“I do note that if you look into the data, it’s not actually detached homes, there was a five per cent lift in detached homes, it’s actually where we’ve seen the decline is in density and multiple multiple dwellings.”

Approvals for multi-unit dwellings dipped significantly with just 84 approvals in three months, less than a third of the 257 approvals in the quarter before and the lowest figure since July 2023.

Mr Carey did acknowledge the issues WA was facing with higher density builds.

“I’ve been on the record that we do have a structural issue here, that is Western Australia has always been weaker in terms of delivering medium to high density projects,” he said.

“That’s why you have seen our government try to do everything we can to bolster that particular sector of the housing market, both through our planning reforms and through our infrastructure fund to get apartments off the ground.

“We’re continuing to look at further measures that we can boost and streamline to make it easier to get density projects off the ground.”

Mr Carey said everything was on the table and a review of residential codes is already underway.

The figures were no surprise to Master Builders Western Australia chief executive officer Matt Moran who said regulatory changes and skills shortage were harming the goal of getting more homes built.

“September’s inflation data, released by the ABS last week, shows Perth experienced an annual inflation rate of 4.5 per cent — the second highest in the country — and this has driven a startling 83.9 per cent increase in the cost of a new home since 2019,” he said.

“Cost increases like we have seen are simply not sustainable. MBAWA continues to call for faster approvals and less red tape to boost supply.”

Mr Carey pushed back against the figures on Tuesday, saying he’d been advised the figure was closer to 30 or 40 per cent.

According to Mr Moran, the MBA’s figure was from the ABS Consumer Price Index, and more recent data in the ABS Producer Price Index had Perth house building output prices rising by even higher, up by more than 90 per cent since 2019.