SLA releases prime Belconnen Town Centre block for auction

Bron Sainsbury Lets wait until it is built, then throw stones.

Geoffrey Bell I wouldn’t. Could be enough to bring down the building.

Lyn Brown I don’t think it’s the car park \but the community centre block looking at the map

Caryn Hill the streets mentioned are the 3 streets around the carpark . The government likes to sell carparks off for more apartment blocks.😕

Caryn Hill it’s the carpark where we all park for church

Yep I know the one. Just thought the map was showing.the community centre. What a bummer

Caryn Hill that side of the road isn’t zoned for high rises (yet)

Tim Mak I imagine if I lived in a literal shoebox, I’d be really scared of rain. And somewhat smaller.

Won’t somebody please think about the car parks!

Philip Leaf developers see value in 3×1 bedroom apartments for $400,000, not 1x 3 bedroom apartment for $800,000.

Apartments are built before you can get multiple dwellings for cheap.

Adam Stewart That’s definitely an issue we should be looking at. How can we create the incentive to make these family friendly apartments.

High density housing is designed to not be family friendly the world over. Medium density such as townhouses and duplexes are better options.

All issues come back to land availablity and not enough being released, combined with a government tax model which is moving away from stamp duty to rates.

More dwellings = more rates.

Adam Stewart on that last point, it’s rather:

Higher unimproved land value = more rates

You can build less dwellings, but each individual dwelling will wear a higher liability.

Robert Knight apartments built in and around town centres of Canberra are always going to increase their unimproved land value

Adam Stewart the approach used by the ACT government is problematic for me.

They outsource their valuations of land to assessors who look at ‘market value’ – i.e. what other real estate in the area is worth based on recent average sales. It’s the same kind of valuation a commercial bank makes on property.

I get annoyed at this because it isn’t a genuine reflection of the public investment and ongoing costs of public infrastructure and services in the vicinity of that land. The government control land release, giving them the ability to artificially inflate market value, and then base people’s rates on those same market values, claiming it’s all done at arm’s reach.

That is exactly what we need if we want to increase housing affordability in the ACT. Denser infill and better publci transport

Philip Leaf …and what we will get is just the denser infill…🙄

I recommend getting involved with Greater Canberra if you want to help get better planning outcomes.

Philip Leaf no Philip, what is needed is more land released at an affordable price to build actual houses so families with kids can have a back yard instead of a tiny balcony, the only winners of these developments are the government because they can get much more rates and the developers

Philip Leaf I have no problem with high density housing, my MIL lives just down the block and it’s super convenient. My problem is sacrificing parking for community spaces like the library and community centre, which are hard up for parking as it is. We should be making it easier for people to use these spaces, or at least not actively making it harder! Not to mention the Park and Ride, which is also on this block.

@jorge further land release would be good but the majority of it is going to be Increasingly further from major services and employment hubs. it also ingores the fact that the vast majority of housing, 80% by area, 60% by land use in the ACT is low density housing and it’s a major contributor to the housing shortage. At the moment demand far exceeds supply and increasing urban infill would allow for cheaper housing closer to major services. Many people would be okay living in an apartment if they had more bedrooms and space, and greenspace existed nearby. If we keep expanding with low density housing we will drive house prices up and deny make services more expensive.

@andrew, I agree we shouldn’t lose those community spaces and I hope that some public parking is kept for people to utilise those community spaces. But every open air carpark is a massive waste of land, especially in a town centre where it could be used for housing or employment next to key services.

@Philip look at the population growth chart and see that this is a false correlation.

We don’t need more houses. We need more affordable houses. Population in Canberra has grown steadily since 1970 from 1.2 to 2% year over year. Boom of high density in the last 4-5 years is driven purely from real estate and speculation.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/canberra-population

See, and realise the current price explosion has nothing to do with that. The “shallow” idea it’s a matter of suplly and demand doesn’t hold. The real estate is only changing hands and prices spiking like it’s happening all over the country. You either believe we got suddenly 30 to 50% increase in population or you believe there was 30-50% of people living under the bridge and just jumped into the market.

That’s still a 10% population increase every 5 year we aren’t adding that much housing. The growth in density is a result of the high house prices and an increasing commute times. We do need more affordable houses but low density isn’t the answer, adding more housing stock is. There were over 12000 registrations for the release of land in Ginninderry which only release 80 blocks. Even if the ACT government quadrupled the land release speed it would still be more too few blocks to cover the demand. Ideally older more central suburbs would be upzoned at the same time to allow town houses and denser options which are not just apartment blocks. Even if you allowed duplex’s you would be able to increase housing supply up to double.

There are a lot of options but just releasing more standard rz1 isn’t going to help as much as accepting density which is better for service delivery, reduces congestion when done with public transport and preserves more green space. If you want to discuss more you should join Greater Canberra

Scott Abela don’t worry, if like the rest are poorly built, they wont last long

Jason Oneill yes and we wonder why the government changed the way apartments pay rates..!!

Jason Oneill of course they will last… Unless the building comes down killing the people it’ll stay there and become more and more slumified…

This is not the case of things that are temporary and will “fade into history oblivion” …

Scott Abela maybe get some character about the city. London is one if the best city s and places in the world it’s the original concrete jungle

Daniel Slug Elliott and Canberra is known as the ‘Bush Capital’… so there’s that..!! Its got plenty of Character that other cities could only dream of, and its being destroyed by one slum being vomited up after another..

Tristan Wellens we pay 440 mate in beloc apartment and it’s the bomb do your research before comments

$600 was an over estimate for comedy reasons. No internet bashing here champ.
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Also out.