Homebuyers will need extra good luck to secure a block of land as developers turn to a lottery ticket system for sales because of high demand.
One of the Sunshine Coast’s biggest developers, Avid, has been grappling with the fairest way to distribute its land releases to the hundreds of people on its books.
During its last release at the Harmony estate in Palmview, an online lottery system was used whereby tickets were issued to interested buyers.
About 200 tickets were given out for the 40 blocks available and all were taken within half an hour of the ballot opening.
Lots at Harmony range in size from from 250sqm to 450sqm, with prices starting from $288,000.
During previous land releases, Avid had used the traditional queuing method and people began camping outside the sales office the night before.
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Avid general manager Qld Bruce Harper said each sales process was fair, but the company had opted to try different ways because not everyone could join a physical queue.
“No matter what way we do it we’re never going to satisfy everybody, but we’re trying to be as equitable as we can with the limited amount of stock that we can produce,” said Mr Harper.
“Some people do shift work or have young families or are solo parents who don’t have the capacity to queue up overnight for a block of land so we’ve had ballot systems to accommodate that.
“We’ve tried to be as fair as possible but it’s fair to say whenever we have a ballot we have far more people — ten times the number of people — seeking to buy a block of land than we have lots available at any release.
“Is it (lottery) the most fair? No, they’re all fair. I don’t like to pick out any system in front of the others.”
Mr Harper said he anticipated land lottery would become an increasing trend while demand outweighed supply.
“I think a number of different developers are having different methods to try and deal with that.
“The question is, how long will this last for? The answer isn’t regulation, the answer is increased supply.”
Housing Industry Association (HIA) executive director Qld, Michael Roberts, said he had never heard of the land lottery system being used in Queensland before, but it was clearly driven by the huge demand, especially in the south-east.
Mr Roberts said developers like Avid would be “hammered” by people wanting to build a new home and were struggling with the most equitable way to distribute the lots.
“There’s no system that’s perfect other than we need more land to meet the demand, that’s solution,” said Mr Roberts.
“We need more land, we need the governments to facilitate that, we need the local governments to plan for it.
“This takes five to ten years to solve. We the industry broadly have been highlighting concerns for 10 years about housing supply in south-east Qld and it’s been an issue that the government at both state and local level have been reluctant to do much about and we’re paying the price for it now.
“I don’t know what people are going to do, and in the meantime the competition drives up the price and it pushes people out of housing.”
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Mr Harper said most of Harmony estate’s buyers were locals, but with the borders now open, the next wave of interstate demand was expected to ramp up even further.
“By and large people have been extraordinarily patient while we’re trying to meet everyone’s needs but knowing we can’t do that,” he said.
The Coast’s other big developer, Stockland, said in a statement to Sunshine Coast News that its sales and enquiries were “robust”, especially at Aura.
However, a real estate agent revealed there was a major land shortage in the master-planned estate and indeed a search on realestate.com brings up no vacant blocks.
Stockland’s regional development manager Adrian Allen said there had been continued strong demand over the past 18 months.
“We’ve responded to this clear customer demand and have fast-tracked the release of land and townhomes in several communities, including Aura where we’re running a number of years ahead of schedule increasing pressure to bring forward new development areas across the SEQ and the Sunshine Coast to meet this stronger demand,” he said.
