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Melbourne enters spring with the deepest pool of stock of any capital city. Agents report vendors are pricing to meet the market rather than testing it, keeping clearance rates stable even as choice widens.
Builders are declining work that would have been taken without hesitation five years ago. Fixed-price contracts, insolvency risk and a thin subcontractor market are converting a planning problem into a delivery problem.
Submissions published this week describe assessment timeframes that have doubled since 2018, with referral authorities identified as the largest single source of delay.
Melbourne has spent four years underperforming the national index. The reasons are structural rather than cyclical, and they explain why rate cuts have had less effect here than anywhere else.
Transport investment is moving to the growth corridors where population is already arriving, reversing a decade of inner-city concentration.
Construction capacity, not funding, is the binding constraint on the current social housing programme.