Based on a presentation to PIA’s Rural, Regional amd Remote conference. The powerpoint is below. This op-ed was published in their Planning Newsletter.
Across Australia, planners are being asked to solve housing shortages using tools designed for growth, not for managing speculative land markets.
The dominant policy response remains consistent: release more land, accelerate approvals, reduce friction. Yet in many growth areas, rural towns and coastal communities, affordability continues to deteriorate despite these efforts.
This is because the issue is not simply one of supply. It is one of control.
Housing scarcity is increasing through reallocation.
Homes are shifting from permanent occupancy toward investment and tourism use. Land is being held, staged and priced in ways that disconnect it from local need. In high-amenity towns, external purchasing power is reshaping entire housing systems.
A clear example is Apollo Bay, where short-term rentals exceeded long-term rental supply by more than double (2024). In such contexts, even modest shifts in dwelling use can remove the equivalent of an entire rental market.
This is a structural reallocation of housing stock.
Planning systems, however, remain largely reactive. They respond once these shifts are visible in prices and availability, rather than when they are being formed.
At the core of this problem is a mismatch between planning tools and market behaviour.
Planning systems were designed to manage land use and coordinate growth. They were not designed to manage speculative dynamics, mobile capital, or the timing strategies that now shape housing outcomes.
Information Asymmetry
Investors operate with foresight. They track infrastructure pipelines, credit conditions, demographic movements and pricing signals, often using sophisticated data systems. Communities and planners, by contrast, experience the outcomes after capital has already moved.
Privatised property data fed into algorithms gives investors earlier visibility and the ability to act ahead of planning responses.
Restoring visibility is therefore a foundational step.
Scarcity in Real Time
A public “Scarcity Radar” would allow planners and communities to see how housing scarcity is forming in real time. By tracking indicators such as auction clearance rates, days on market, development staging, ,infrastructure rollouts and vacancy patterns, it becomes possible to distinguish between genuine demand and strategically constrained supply.
Without this level of visibility, planning remains reactive by default.
Yet visibility alone is insufficient. The deeper issue lies in land tenure.
Much of Australia’s affordable housing policy focuses on assisting individuals into the market. Without mechanisms to retain affordability, these gains are quickly absorbed into rising land values.
Current policy focuses on market entry rather than retaining long-term affordability.
Ring Fencing Land for Locals
A stewardship approach shifts attention to the long-term control of land. Community Land Trusts provide a model for this, separating land ownership from housing and embedding resale conditions that maintain affordability over time.
This transforms affordability from a temporary intervention into a permanent condition.
Planning systems can support this shift by moving from permissioning to conditioning.
Rather than simply approving development, planning can set enforceable conditions on who housing is for, how it is allocated, and how affordability is retained. International models such as Rural and Community ‘Exception Sites’ demonstrate how small-scale housing can be enabled outside standard growth sequences, provided that local need is demonstrated and affordability is preserved in perpetuity.
This aligns planning decisions with community continuity rather than market expansion.
Managing the Reallocation of Housing
Short-term rentals, holiday homes and land banking are not peripheral issues. They are central mechanisms through which housing is diverted away from long-term use.
Registration systems for short-term rentals improve visibility but do not control scale. An Airbnb Cap ‘n Trade system offers a more effective approach, setting limits on non-hosted short-term rentals and treating tourism accommodation as a managed resource rather than an unlimited private right.
Similarly, differential rating and land taxation can discourage the withholding of serviced land. When land is zoned and serviced but not developed, it reduces effective supply while benefiting from public investment.
Transparency Gaps
Pre-development control through option agreements and aggregated holdings allows future land supply to be shaped long before development occurs. In New South Wales, elements of this activity are partially visible through transfer duty administration and the land titles system, including the use of caveats. However, there is no dedicated, public property options registry that provides a clear picture of these patterns.
This limits the ability of planners to anticipate where scarcity is being structured in advance.
A national approach to improving transparency in land control would materially strengthen planning capability.
Planning Settings and Unintended Outcomes
Large minimum lot sizes in some areas enable low-density subdivision that fragments land without supporting local housing needs. At the same time, smaller, well-located housing for local workers is frequently constrained.
This creates a contradiction: planning permits fragmentation for private amenity while restricting modest density for community function.
A stewardship-based approach would introduce pathways for small-scale, clustered housing where conditions ensure permanent affordability, protect productive land and locate development near infrastructure.
The intent is to redirect development toward outcomes that support long-term community viability.
For planners, the implications are practical.
What planners can do now
Apply differential rating to serviced but undeveloped land to discourage land banking.
Advocate for capped systems for non-hosted short-term rentals to protect long-term housing supply.
Embed perpetual affordability requirements through development agreements, covenants or trust-based models.
Support pilot projects using Community Land Trust structures or equivalent tenure models.
Identify and enable “exception pathway” style developments that prioritise local need and long-term affordability.
Advocate for improved transparency mechanisms, including visibility over option agreements and aggregated land control.
Planning is one of the few systems capable of conditioning land use, not just permitting it.
Without this shift, growth-orientated housing outcomes will continue to be shaped by actors operating outside the planning system’s field of view. Increasing supply alone will not resolve affordability if the underlying dynamics of land control remain unchanged.
From speculation to stewardship is a necessary evolution in how planning engages with land, housing and community continuity across Australia.