In this article our secretary Howard Bartlett demonstrates the reasons why it is essential to involve the home buyers in the housing development process. At present the market is dominated by developers and builders who are focusing on growth of their turnover and margins. However, the buyers and renters are ultimately the best judges of their own needs… Let’s hope authorities such as councils and governments at State and Federal level will eventually learn this and design their future policies accordingly.
“A carefully crafted house siting policy can encourage neighbours to negotiate outcomes to their mutual benefit and as a group benefit from the uplift in values that flow from a thoughtful, incremental planning process.” says Howard Bartlett in his town planning article designed for local councils.
There are self-build groups such as The Property Collective which can address these issues by stepping in but often the process is complicated by local authorities and town planners preferring to deal with “the devil they know” and that is let the developers bid for the whole parcel rather than doing a bit of homework that would make the individual parcels of land available directly to home owners.
If you like to read more you can download the full article.