00:02Dave Anderson's dream of buying a place to live in Western Sydney has slipped far beyond reach.
00:08So unless I suddenly win the lottery I'm not going to own a house in Sydney.
00:12Our choices are renting for life or going bush.
00:17A lot of our friends are moving out of Sydney because we just can't afford it.
00:22That aspiration could become even more elusive as developers ditch plans for new apartments in Western Sydney.
00:29We're getting 22,000 approvals in Western Sydney over the last 12 months, only 11,000 commencements.
00:36Anywhere west of Parramatta, particularly in the area of apartments, it's very difficult to make the finances stack up.
00:43That's because of the growing gap between the cost to build an apartment and the price it can be sold
00:49for.
00:49Yeah, over the last couple of years we've seen a big increase in construction prices.
00:53So the cost of building a dwelling is up near between 40, 50, 60%.
00:57And that's meant that it's been harder for developers to make projects commercially feasible.
01:01Developers say they're shifting their focus to Sydney's north and east,
01:05where they say people are prepared to pay much higher prices for apartments.
01:08And there are fears with interest rates going back up.
01:11It could make investing in housing projects in the west even more risky.
01:15If ever there was a signal to the government that they need to take action to reduce the cost of
01:20construction
01:21by reducing some of those fees, taxes and charges, well this is it.
01:25If we don't kind of see more of this affordable housing coming in Western Sydney,
01:29what we'll start to see is more of a brain drain out of Western Sydney.
01:33People will be even priced out of those more affordable suburbs.
01:36The government says it's already tackling the problem with a pre-sale finance scheme
01:40which fast tracks the construction of housing projects.
01:43And it insists Western Sydney can't do the heavy lifting for housing alone.
01:51And one more thing is that one to say,
01:51how do we plan to do with the economic development 2000,
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