Housing density has surged across Australia's cities, yet home prices keep hitting fresh records

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The YIMBY movement argues fewer development restrictions and more construction will lower property prices. But two decades of intense densification across Australia's cities suggest it may not be the cure-all they hope for.

It's the number one issue around Australia, particularly in our biggest cities, groaning under record population growth — finding somewhere affordable to live.

So, the key tenets of YIMBYism aren't new, just the catchy label and proliferation of activist groups under its banner. But is the cause more urgent now than it was in 2011?They leave no doubt our cities have densified considerably over the past two decades, long before YIMBYs clamoured for it.Nationally, our capitals are squeezing 40 per cent more people into the same land area than they were in 2003.

Australia's densest locality, the north end of Melbourne's CBD, has more than seven times more people living in it than it did in 2003. To a lesser extent, the same applies when negotiating with the different owners of several standalone houses to acquire enough land for a block of units. This form of YIMBYism advocates a totally supply-side response favoured by sections of the orthodox economics community which take demand as a given and therefore see more output as the only solution whenever prices rise.

"Dwellings are likely to suffer from diseconomies of scale, whereby the cost of new dwellings rises as the number of new builds increases," Yetsenga explains. Among them, the tax-free status of the family home, its complete exclusion from various assets tests and stamp duty discouraging property transactions.

 

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