The fact that the ACT government is the sole vendor of land for housing in the Territory ensures Labor is a natural target of criticism about perceived market failures, especially the adequacy of the housing mix across the price spectrum.
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The latest broadside has been hurled by Ron Bell, chief executive of the Real Estate Institute of the ACT, who maintains that land releases since 2011 have become increasingly skewed towards units, townhouses and apartments. Indeed, figures indicate 91 per cent of land releases in 2014-15 were for medium density and unity-style housing.
The result is that it is now more difficult and expensive for people to buy detached housing in Canberra. Moreover, Mr Bell maintains that medium-density housing in new suburbs like Coombs is so prevalent that "it's going to be a problem later on". He's also critical of the cookie-cutter aspect of medium-density housing, saying that as a buyer looking to downsize to a three-bedroom townhouse, he's been frustrated at the lack of choice.
But with brickbats come bouquets: a new housing report by Corelogic RP Data suggests Canberra is the nation's second most-affordable place in the country to buy real estate, based on median house prices divided by average weekly incomes. So while the top 10 per cent of the Canberra housing market may be especially expensive (witness the recent sale of a $5.475 million home in Yarralumla), housing affordability is not yet a complete oxymoron in the ACT.
As both a consumer and a real estate professional, Mr Bell's assessment carries certain validity. The difficulty is that it's hard to judge what the "right" distribution of land prices and variety should be given the wide discrepancies in buyer expectations. Were he looking for a two-bedroom apartment in a largish block close to one of the town centres, Mr Bell would be spoilt for choice.
But because the government has only limited research tools to inform its marketing decisions (and because it has to consider environmental factors and financial returns as well) some of its decisions appear less than ideal when viewed in hindsight.
Some Canberra high-rises do look like being tomorrow's slums, and certain suburbs have been blighted by inadequate infrastructure provision. But the government had no real option but to move the city away from expensive and wasteful urban sprawl. This meant embracing medium and high-density development while ensuring the release of sufficient land to cater for the detached and semi-detached housing market.
Apartments are not to everyone's tastes, but they have made it easier for average Canberrans to get a foot in the real estate door now than ever before. As for whether Labor is doing enough to cater for the housing needs of people on low incomes, the shelving of Jon Stanhope's land release policies since 2011 suggests not.
