Debunking “Brisbane City Council Ban on Townhouses and Apartments No Way To Tackle City’s Biggest Problem: Urban Sprawl”

The following is an article recently penned by Jorge Branco and published by Domain. It is one opinion and as a property economist, I sought to express my own in contrast to it. The article Jorge wrote is in italics, my comments are made in plain text.

Brisbane City Council is on a crusade to “protect the Brisbane backyard”. In those terms, the council’s bipartisan push to ban townhouses and apartments in low-density suburbs seems almost noble.

The simple reality is that Council is in fact protecting land uses that were designed for detached housing given the relaxation and often poor outcomes that occurred during the most recent investment cycle. Council is not banning apartments and townhouses, it is simply enforcing where they can and can’t go. Some might argue from a property economics perspective that this actually creates certainty in the market place. It protects the asset values of some housing, whilst also ensuring that affordability in those low density areas does not get inflated by developers that can pay more for a site than a Mum or dad purchaser, let alone a first home buyer. I suspect you will find that many suburbs actually have a mix of low density and higher density land uses throughout.