According to the National Housing Supply Council (NHSC), Australia needs to grow its current rate of house-building by more than +30% over the next 20 years just to keep pace with demand.

The supply/demand gap has increased to 178,400 homes in the year to June 2009 which has increased from 2008’s shortfall of 99,500. The state of Victoria has a housing shortfall of 22,000 while the biggest shortages, of about 60,000, were in New South Wales and Queensland. By 2029, Australia’s shortfall is expected to be 640,000 homes.

According to the NHSC, low-income earners have been hardest hit by the housing shortfall with more than 160,000 households paying more than half their income on housing repayments and 170,000 paying more than half their income on rent.

In addition, the report said that long delays in building new homes in growth areas with greenfield developments taking up to 15 years to complete. The report also said that one in ten Australian homes are unoccupied and that a quarter of these are holiday homes.