The pandemic, for all its woes, has had one positive outcome in that more money is being spent domestically.
The construction industry, through several Federal and State Government incentives to kick start the economy, is working at a breakneck pace.
One of those incentives is a commitment by the State Government to spend $5.3B on the
Big Housing Build across the state on social and affordable housing.
$532M in fast-start projects will build more than 1,000 new homes and kick start the program which will deliver more than 12,000 new homes and create 10,000 jobs a year, each year over the next four years.
The Shepparton region is scheduled to receive more than $45M from this funding.
The State Government’s Big Housing Build will boost social housing supply by 10 percent, providing a stable foundation for thousands of Victorians to build their lives. It will also drive Victoria’s recovery.
Colin Mintern from Hotondo Homes Shepparton expressed some concern for the government program pointing out that every builder in the region is currently snowed under with their existing contracts to want to take on a slow-moving government program.
“Just trying to get tradies is proving difficult at the moment, everyone is working flat out. A lot of people took advantage of the $25,000 grant last year and although it has dropped back to $15,000, it is still a great incentive,” Colin said.
“The next difficulty we are likely to come against is that of availability of land. There are no new developments scheduled to be complete until 2023 at the moment so that will put some pressure on the market later this year.
“We are getting two to three enquiries a day at the moment so I can’t see it slowing down until the end of this year at least.”
