Super Ramps Up Affordable Housing Investment

Carolyn Viney may have only been chief executive of Super Housing Partnerships for six months but the extent of investor appetite for affordable housing has become clear.

“A key part of the decision to come to Super Housing Partnerships was that it’s the right time to be in housing,” she said.

“What I underestimated, and what has been pleasantly surprising, was the amount of genuine interest from large institutional capital to play at scale in the affordable housing space in Australia at a time when our country absolutely needs that solution. 

“I’d seen some [capital] was there, I was hoping more of it was there and in my first six months, what I have come to understand is there’s a lot of it there. 

“We just need to work super quickly with how we get that money deployed and into homes that are actually being built.”

Viney, formerly the chief development officer at Vicinity Centres, was speaking after her panel discussions at Urbanity 23, The Urban Developer’s three-day conference at the Gold Coast’s The Star.

▲ Carolyn Viney during the Urbanity 23 panel.

Major topics of discussion included the affordability and undersupply of housing, as well as the major opportunities developers and institutional investors alike see in the sector.

“Super funds fundamentally need to make returns for their members….that’s what they’re fundamentally motivated by, but their ability to invest in the sector like this didn’t exist 10 years ago,” Vinney said.

“We weren’t delivering in a single line, large scale development opportunities in residential. 

“They like the idea that there are lots of other variables that happen around retail and office around personal preferences, but fundamentally, everyone needs somewhere to live. 

“Our overall investment market then is permanent, and the trends around exactly where someone wants to live or the size of the apartment, but the fundamentals of that are fixed.”

Affordable build-to-rent

An area of growth Viney highlighted was affordable build-to-rent products.

“We’ve seen build-to-rent start in Australia with a proliferation at that premium level, but we know that the deepest demand is in the affordable piece,” she said.

“The biggest part of the market that is the most undersupplied is that affordable segment. And by affordable I mean everything from social to essential worker [accommodation]. 

“Whether that is 100 per cent affordable housing targeting key workers, through to how do you weave more affordable housing through a broader residential product that might involve normal market rental housing. 

“The reality is we need more across all those iterations.”

▲ Brisbane is out ahead of the pack nationally, say Vinney.

Ahead of the pack 

But there is one city leading the charge in terms of its amenability towards masterplans, new types of housing, and generally getting new products over the line,Viney said.

“Brisbane is out ahead of the pack nationally,” she said.

“Brisbane City Council in particular, in understanding the need to unlock supply and of residential and timeframes to get from start to finish by your town planning regime, is best of breed. 

“If you would talk to people in Melbourne and Sydney about big town planning decisions made in less than 12 months, they have no aspiration that would happen in Melbourne or Sydney in the short term. 

“We’re working towards those things, but the reality is that Brisbane already has all of that, so I think that’s a huge advantage for Brisbane in terms of being able to attract investment and deliver supply on the ground.”