Quarter 2 has seen Townsville City Council approve the issue of new titles for the most residential lots in a decade, signalling confidence in the region as the development industry doubles down to meet the demand for housing in the region.
Acting Mayor Ann-Maree Greaney said with a significant number of lots being completed by the development industry, Council was able to approve 409 residential lots in Q2, 2024/25.
"It's no secret Townsville has seen solid growth with increased population and investors seeing Townsville as a place to buy, resulting in house prices surging by almost 30 per cent in the past year, so there is certainly a need to be releasing more residential lots," Cr Greaney said.
"The previous quarter the development industry completed just shy of 200 lots, resulting in Council approving 187 lots, so to be able to more than double that sees us getting closer to keeping up with current housing demand."
Bohle Plains saw the most approvals in the quarter with 99 residential lots endorsed, followed by Rassmussen at 65, Burdell at 58, Julago 52 and Shaw at 42.
Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA), Townsville branch co-president Michael Tapiolas said seeing lot creation numbers of this scale was a strong result.
"These numbers reflect the efforts of both the local development industry and Townsville City Council, which have implemented various initiatives to accelerate housing supply," Mr Tapiolas said.
"Despite ongoing challenges around labour, resources and rising costs, with ongoing support from Council, the industry is well-positioned to further increase housing delivery to meet the needs of the region.
"The opportunities ahead for our region are immense, making it essential to provide sufficient housing to support future growth. These strong lot creation figures demonstrate the industry's capability to meet this demand."
Councillor Greaney said Council's recent endorsement of the Local Housing Action Plan (LHAP) bolstered the organisation's commitment to working with industry on the current housing challenges.
"With both low unemployment and vacancy rates and a steadily rising population we need to be working with all stakeholder in meeting our housing needs," Cr Greaney said.
"It is a multifaceted challenge, but from a Council perspective we're targeting four key pillars in our LHAP, including infrastructure delivery and planning regulation changes to help accelerate the delivery of new housing.
It's great to see some progress towards one of the key aims of the LHAP, which is set to see us going from delivering around 700 new homes to 1,200 each year.
"By getting more lots approved we can hopefully maintain Townsville's affordability advantage relative to capital city housing markets and get more people in houses so we can continue growing our region's industries and Townsville as a city."
View Townsville City Council's Local Housing Action Plan (LHAP)
