The Property Council of Australia has welcomed the findings of the NSW Intergenerational Report but says the state now needs a practical delivery plan to turn its housing and productivity projections into completed homes.
Property Council NSW executive director Katie Stevenson (pictured) said the report reinforces the organisation's long-running advocacy on planning reform, housing supply, productivity, and tax settings.
"This report makes clear that NSW can't accommodate millions more people, lift living standards and maintain essential services without building more homes and making our cities more productive," Stevenson said.
While the government has made progress on planning reform — including the recent Building (Approvals and Practitioners) Bill 2026, which the Property Council says will streamline approvals and support faster housing delivery — she argued that rezoning land is only the first step toward actual housing delivery.
"The government deserves credit for the planning reforms already underway, but planning capacity is not the same as housing delivery. A rezoning doesn't become a home unless the project is feasible, financed, serviced and able to move into construction," Stevenson said.
That warning is backed by the Property Council's own data from earlier this year. NSW recorded 51,829 commencements and 44,700 completions in the 12 months to March 2026 — both well short of the 88,386 homes needed annually to meet the state's National Housing Accord target of 377,000 new homes by July 2029.
She pointed to a broader set of obstacles standing between approvals and completed homes, including construction costs, taxes, charges, infrastructure delays, workforce shortages, and access to capital, arguing these barriers need the same policy focus currently directed at planning and assessment reform.
The report also flags rising pressure on emergency services funding as the state's population grows and climate-related disasters become more frequent, a finding Stevenson said is directly relevant to a NSW Parliamentary Committee currently examining long-term reform options for the emergency services levy.
Rather than introducing new charges targeted at a single sector, Stevenson called for a broad-based approach to funding this pressure.
"As these costs grow, we need to consider a broad-based, fair and sustainable funding approach that shares the burden among everyone that benefits, rather than introducing new taxes and charges on one sector," she said, warning that added costs on the property sector inevitably flow through to tenants, businesses, and consumers.
ABS Building Approvals data shows NSW approvals rose 13.2% in June, even as approvals fell in Victoria and South Australia. For brokers and their property investor or developer clients, the report is a signal that construction and financing conditions, not just planning approvals, remain the key bottleneck to new housing supply in NSW.
Stevenson said the state's response should focus on faster, more coordinated approvals, infrastructure delivered alongside growth, a skilled construction workforce, and investment settings that keep NSW competitive for capital. As she put it, "the task now is for government, industry, and the community to build the delivery plan that gets us there."
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