Housing ‘insanity’ has the construction industry thinking outside the box

The cost of living has forced business owners to think outside the box to address housing on the Gold Coast. 

According to digital housing market analysis company REA Group, property prices on the Gold Coast are some of the strongest in the country.

“In terms of the amount of stock available for sale, the Gold Coast is still seeing pretty tight listing conditions,” property analyst Cameron Kusher said.

Last year’s Woman of the Year, entrepreneur and founding director of My Bella Casa, Tamika Smith, believed off-site construction of one-bedroom houses for new dwellings was the answer.

“What we want to see is what the government is seeking to do differently.”

Off-site homes

Ms Smith said homes built in a warehouse and shipped to various locations could help ease pressure on the construction industry.

Her company builds small homes that can be placed on sites “that no-one else wants.”

“The sloping sites, the flood-affected areas, we can build them off up on stilts,” she said.

“I think off-site construction has traditionally been compared with a donga, the mining camps.

“It looks nothing like that for what we deliver, but it’s an innovative way to build affordable housing.”

Ms Smith said it was up to local and state governments to put aside land for the demountable homes.

“We’ve come to the table and said, ‘We know we need to do things differently, we’re going to manage this process, we’re going to build it, we’re going to fund it’,” she said.

“The Gold Coast seems to be ignorant in assuming it doesn’t have an affordable housing crisis, but in fact it does.”

Tight housing 

Mr Kushing of the REA said there was a “significant lack of rental supply” on the Gold Coast, as the city battled to keep up with a booming population. 

Mr Kushing suspected many people were buying up second properties in the city but were not putting them up for rent.

“On the Gold Coast, we’ve seen rents for houses increase by almost 23 per cent over the past year,” he said.

Interstate buyers from Sydney and Melbourne have flooded the Gold Coast market since COVID, as people looked for tree and sea changes.

Ms Smith said when government-run programs ended and rents rose, “the landlord wins”.

“We’ve structured a program where we lease the homes to housing providers, we’re looking at 50 to 100 every year, but we merely transfer the asset after those long-term leases end,” she said.

She said her program would commit to a fixed rent for a 20-year period.

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