Infrastructure the key to unlocking land for SEQ homes, say experts

Infrastructure connecting gas, electricity, sewerage and transport to 60,000 empty house blocks is needed now, Queensland planning experts say.

Brisbane Times last month reported that more than 60,000 lots of land in south-east Queensland had been approved for development by councils but had not been brought to market.

Master planner Peter Sherrie, from Queensland’s Urban Development Institute of Australia, said the government’s housing taskforce should investigate why so much land was not coming to market.

“Because that is obviously your low-hanging fruit. I think it warrants further investigation to release land. If it is already approved, identify why it cannot be brought to market sooner,” he said.

But Andrea Blake, a senior lecturer in property economics at Queensland University of Technology, said there were reasons why lots were left vacant.

“It might be that the catalytic infrastructure is not in place yet,” she said.

The state of major infrastructure projects in SEQ

Brisbane’s western suburbs

• $298.5 million plans to widen the Centenary Bridge by 2025.
• Further widening of the Centenary Motorway out past Oxley might follow.

Connecting north and southern coast through central Brisbane

• The $6.3 billion underground Cross River Rail to be completed by “first quarter 2026”.

Brisbane’s northern suburbs

• There is no advice from the federal government on Carseldine’s $210 million Beams Road overpass.
• $2.198 billion in three Bruce Highway upgrade projects between Brisbane and Moreton Bay.
• $20 million to identify new highway links to western alternative to Bruce Highway.
• $35 million to examine road tunnel between Airport Link and the Bruce Highway might be finished by 2032.
• Overall, south-east Queensland needs 900,000 dwellings for 2.2 million people by 2041.

Citywide

• Brisbane City Council will have its new bus routes finished by the end of 2023.

Blake said providing infrastructure was crucial to bringing the thousands of lots of land near Ipswich (13,200), Logan (11,923), Moreton Bay (9423) and Brisbane (6423) to the real estate market.

“People moving in there early have no social infrastructure, no community infrastructure, and no transport infrastructure. It is very difficult to live there,” Blake said.

‘It is all about the infrastructure, that is the key.’QUT property economist Andrea Blake

She said the Centenary Motorway’s extension to Springfield in 2007, and the later extension of the rail line to Springfield in 2013, were examples of infrastructure driving residential growth.

Sherrie agreed that government needed to establish infrastructure as an incentive to residential development.

“When I was part of the UDIA, we always said to the government, ‘if you want development in a certain area, run the infrastructure out’,” Sherrie said.

He said the growth of Springfield to 48,000 residents was a good, contemporary example.

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Springfield Central train station is one hub of the proposed Ipswich to Springfield Central public transport corridor.CREDIT:TONY MOORE

“All you’ve got to do is watch the residential development as the Centenary Highway went out through Springfield through the 1990s and early 2000s.”

He said that at that time, former Queensland planning minister Terry Mackenroth was nervous about infrastructure investment during a high-cost environment, similar to today’s economic climate.

“When that infrastructure is needed, you generally find the market is pretty strong,” he said.

The Queensland government did not answer questions, referring instead to Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon’s previous remarks that construction industry constraints were behind Queensland’s closing stock.  

Article source: Queensland Property Investor