TEN years out from hosting the 2032 Olympic Games, the global event shapes as an opportunity for Brisbane to develop housing supply ahead of the city facing a shortfall in the coming years.
According to PRD analysis, the Olympics are set to deliver $8.1 billion in benefits to the sunshine state, including $4.6 billion in tourism and $3.5 billion in social improvements such as health and community benefits. It will also provide 91,600 jobs.
“Hosting the Olympics can be a vehicle for residential supply, evident in past examples,” PRD chief economist, Diaswati Mardiasmo said, citing the examples of Sydney, Tokyo and Beijing.
“Known and current 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games residential supply needs further development when compared to previous Olympics. Now is a golden opportunity to harness the potential of creating a well-informed housing supply legacy that targets a range of demographic needs. Queensland can aspire to what other Olympic Games delivered for housing supply.”
According to Urbis and Q Shelter, large-scale events like the Olympic and Paralympic Games will cause displacement of existing populations without early interventions to prevent rising rental costs and ensure adequate housing supply. Brisbane is heading for a peak shortfall of 5,000 dwellings in 2027-28, according to the National Housing Finance and Investment corporation. There is currently a 16,760 social housing waitlist for south east Queensland.
Brisbane apartments supply has hit a nine-year low in 2022, while the 2,300 completions in 2021 down 79% on the peak of 11,000 apartments in 2016 and is the lowest rate of annual supply since 2013. The short-term future pipeline will drop further, with just 1,500 commencements last year, and 1,400 apartments launched in 2022 – the lowest number in the last decade.
Of particular focus will be the Northshore Hamilton Priority Development Area – also known as The Village – which will see $500 million in private investment and create 1,600 construction jobs around the 10,000-bed athletes’ village.
Mardiasmo said the Olympics had long-term affects to previous host cities, with a strong tendency for housing supply and demand to increase, leading to healthy price growth. This was often due to athletes’ villages in main CBD areas becoming vacant and serving as build-to-rent and market accommodation for a variety of owner occupiers and investors.
Accommodation supply proposed in preparation of the 2032 Olympics include two hotel towers of 181 apartments in Woolloongabba – near the redeveloped Gabba – a 182-room hotel development in Mooloolaba. A 196-room hotel tower at Manors Gate group Broadbeach, 252 apartments in Broadbeach.
Taking into account Brisbane Expo 1988, the Sydney Olympics and G20 Brisbane Summit in 2014, median house prices would result in many key 2032 Olympic Games suburbs becoming $1 million areas, such as Woolloongabba, South Brisbane, Herston, Spring Hill and Twin Waters (on the Sunshine Coast). Many others come close, such as Tennyson and Broadbeach on the Gold Coast.
Meanwhile, Hamilton and Chandler would break the $4 million median price mark, and affordable areas such as Ipswich, Redland Bay and Coomera would break $1 million median price mark.
Between 2003 and 2015, which captures the years prior to the 2014 G20 Summit and the year after, median house prices in South Bank and the surrounding suburbs grew by an average of 111.6%.
Mardiasmo said the issue with the Olympics and other international games is that a lack of planning and management can lead to an underutilisation of new supply, as seen in the Rio and Athens Olympic Games. There were 3,341 apartments abandoned in Rio and just 259 apartments sold.
The Urbis and Q-Shelter analysis also showed the Rio Games in 2016 saw 250,000 people directly or indirectly forced out of their homes, over two million people made way for the Seoul and Beijing Games, while 6,000 public housing residents were relocated in the lead-up to the Atlanta Games and a further 24,000 were displaced through gentrification.
