Federal housing investment to deliver 680 affordable homes in Perth

Perth will receive the equivalent of 680 new affordable and social housing dwellings through a combination of Housing Australia Future Fund grants, Help to Buy shared equity participation, and social housing repair and maintenance investment in the current Commonwealth housing investment cycle — the largest federal housing commitment to Western Australia in more than two decades.

The HAFF component will deliver 480 new dwellings through community housing provider partnerships, with a concentration in Perth's northern growth corridor from Butler to Yanchep where the population has grown rapidly but affordable housing supply has not kept pace. The Help to Buy program, which allows eligible buyers to purchase with as little as a 2 per cent deposit with the Commonwealth holding an equity share, has registered more than 3,200 WA expressions of interest in its first month of operation.

Federal Housing Minister Julie Collins said WA's housing market had experienced the most extreme affordability compression of any state over the past three years, with rental vacancy effectively at zero and median house prices having risen 38 per cent. "Perth was for a long time Australia's most affordable capital city. That is no longer the case, and the federal government's programs are specifically designed to rebuild that accessibility," she said.

WA Housing Minister John Carey confirmed the state government would contribute surplus government land to the community housing provider program, adding approximately $120 million in land value to the overall program investment. The state is also establishing a new WA Land Authority to expedite the rezoning and servicing of additional residential land in the growth corridors.

Real Estate Institute of WA president Joe White cautioned that demand-side assistance like Help to Buy needed to be balanced with supply increases or it would simply add to price pressure in an already constrained market.

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