Other forms of housing

The annual housing supply forecast for Sydney does not explicitly forecast or include the following housing types:

• secondary dwellings
• boarding houses
• student accommodation
• group homes
• seniors living developments, including retirement villages, hostels and aged-care facilities
• housing for people with a disability
• manufactured housing estates.

We provide key data on some of these other forms of housing that help meet the needs of Sydney’s diverse and growing population.

Secondary dwellings and dual occupancies are lots that have added a second place to live. This sort of development is relevant to the overall housing supply in Sydney. Secondary dwellings can increase housing density in established areas.

Figure 1 shows the key differences between dual occupancies and secondary dwellings.

Figure 1. Comparing dual occupancies and secondary dwellings

View a larger version of the dual occupancies and secondary dwellings comparison

The main differences are that for a dual occupancy, the dwellings can be equal in size, whereas a secondary dwelling must be smaller than the main home. A dual occupancy can be subdivided or strata-titled, which means each home can have individual owners. A secondary dwelling cannot be subdivided from the land on which the main home stands.

Although our forecasting method does not cover secondary dwellings, it may cover dual occupancies both in:

• the development pipeline (as development consents)
• completed new homes (as separate water connections with Sydney Water, our proxy for dwelling completions).

The best source of information on secondary dwellings is the Local Performance Development Monitor. We have collected data about secondary dwelling approvals by local government area (LGA) from the 2006–07 to 2019–20 financial years. Approvals include development applications and complying development certificates.

The map in Figure 2 shows the total number of secondary dwelling approvals by LGA for the 2019–20 financial year. Visit the Local Performance Development Monitor for data from previous years.

Figure 2. Number of secondary dwelling approvals by LGA for the 2019–20 financial year

• The pipeline of other forms of housing includes seniors housing, group homes, housing for people with a disability and boarding houses (which include student accommodation).
• Although all these projects may not be built, this pipeline gives a sense of the development that will service housing needs outside traditional housing markets (for example, private rental and ownership of units and houses).
• We combine the information for Greater Sydney and looks at additional beds, bedrooms and units as reported by a project’s planning documents.
• These other housing types may be a notable form of potential supply for some LGAs.

We compiled a pipeline of other forms of housing, excluding secondary dwellings and manufactured home estates, using CoreLogic's Cordell Connect Australia Project database. The pipeline refers to:

• development applications lodged for assessment with a consent authority
• development applications approved but not yet begun
• developments under construction.

The purpose was to identify and track the scope and breadth of ‘other dwelling’ developments that will contribute to the diversity of Sydney’s future housing supply. As at June 2021, based on planning information (projects in the system) there was potential across Sydney for:

	5,830 units within 170 developments
	18,670 bedrooms within 476 developments
	4,220 beds within 36 developments

Note that we have rounded totals to the nearest 10.

You cannot directly compare the 2 products because the Sydney housing supply forecast counts dwellings and the other counts bedrooms/units/beds.

The chart in Figure 3 shows the ‘other dwellings’ pipeline broken down to sub-categories of units, bedrooms and beds. We have also broken down each LGA to show how many of each accommodation type are in the pipeline for the LGA.

Figure 3. 'Other dwellings' pipeline by type

Factors that drive demand for other forms of housing in an LGA include:

• how close they are to universities and other higher education institutions
• how close they are to large employers, such as hospitals
• existing facilities for seniors if there is an older population
• comparatively high costs and lower availability of the traditional private rental market.

Generally, we report:

• independent seniors housing as the number of units
• boarding houses (including student accommodation) as the number of bedrooms and beds
• aged-care facilities as the number of beds.