NT Government eyes bringing more land to market following review | NT Independent

NT Government eyes bringing more land to market following review

by | Feb 21, 2022 | Business | 0 comments

The NT Government has released a report into how it will deliver more titled land to market, which it says it hopes will address the “boom-bust cycle” of the NT’s residential market and accommodate population growth “for decades into the future”.

“Team Territory” co-chair Dick Guit said the primary purpose of the review was to “enhance the current Land Development Process to achieve a titled land supply that satisfies the market demand in a timely and efficient manner”.

According to the review, NT land areas are currently being released across the Northern Territory on multiple development fronts.

In Greater Darwin, the largest development fronts are in Palmerston East, Berrimah (Northcrest), Lee Point/Muirhead and other smaller private land releases.

Land is also being released in Katherine East, Kilgariff in Alice Springs, Tennant Creek and regional centres such as Timber Creek and Pine Creek.

In the 2021-2022 budget, the NT Government identified $1.1 million to support the release of land in Holtze and Kowandi. This development front has the potential for over 5000 lots. Headworks (for enabling infrastructure) are scheduled to commence in 2022-23.

The review also states that a recent spike in demand has highlighted certain aspects of the planning approval processes and their associated timeframes that can exasperate the land development industry and cause delays to the end consumers’ ability to purchase a residential titled lot.

These spikes in the market are highly unpredictable, resulting in land developers unable to produce titled lots quickly enough to meet consumer demand in the short-term with end consumers’ experiencing waiting times of up to nine months before they can settle on their land and are able to commence the building of a home.

The residential market has slowed since 2016 and demand was at its lowest on record in 20 years, with only 210 urban residential lots titled in 2019 and conditions continuing to look bleak with the emergence of COVID-19, the report stated.

Subsequently, the continued production of serviced and titled land slowed to meet the significantly reduced demand.

“The lack of availability of titled land was a direct result of a lack of confidence in future demand on the part of the development industry,” the report stated. “Planning and construction activity ceased or slowed as industry waited for positive signals to become evident.”

The review also found that following the Federal Government’s HomeBuilder grant, in addition to the Northern Territory Government’s Home Owner Discount and the BuildBonus grant, together with extremely low borrowing costs, an unexpected upswing in the market in 2020 meant existing stock of titled land (or ready to be titled land) was quickly taken up and developers experienced delays in releasing new titled stock to market.

Industry stakeholders raised concerns that the delay in the “issuing of titles” was of significant concern.

“However, it was found that the time taken to issue a “Title” itself takes only 1-2 days once the necessary Land Title Office (LTO) forms are submitted to the LTO and the LTO is satisfied there is an approved survey plan by the Surveyor General,” the report added.

The Review identified that the delays are associated with the processes that occur prior to the issuing of a title, as part of the subdivision development process and within key areas identified below.

Whilst the volatility of the Northern Territory residential market puts pressure on the land development industry to deliver product to meet spikes in demand and can adversely impact the end-consumer, at a macro-level this boom-bust cycle also negatively impacts private investment and growth in the economy more broadly and impacts overall population growth, the report found.

Infrastructure Minister Eva Lawler said the report would “build upon ongoing initiatives”.

“We are making the Territory the best place to do business, and this review will help pave the way future growth and economic development,” she said.

More details on the report and recommendations here: https://dipl.nt.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/1070818/bringing-land-to-market-report-recommendations.pdf

 

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