Brendan Coates: Ending the bans on housing

Podcast: The Inflection Points PodcastEpisode: Brendan Coates: Ending the bans on housingPub date: 2025-12-14Get Podcast Transcript →powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarizationAustralia’s housing stock is growing more slowly than its population, and for the first time in decades, we are failing to build enough homes in the places people want to live. The result is a median home price in Sydney that is more than 10 times the median household income.In this episode, Brendan Coates, the Housing and Economic Security Program Director at the Grattan Institute, outlines the findings of their latest report, “More homes, better cities”, arguing that the root cause of the crisis isn't immigration, tax settings, or banking—it's that our planning systems say "no" by default.They discuss how 80% of residential land near Sydney's CBD is restricted to three stories or less, and how removing these bans could unlock hundreds of thousands of new homes. Brendan explains why "gentle density"—allowing three-story townhouses as-of-right—is the key to affordability, better streetscapes, and economic productivity.Read Brendan Coates’ “Planning is the Bottleneck to New Housing”: https://inflectionpoints.work/articles/planning-is-the-bottleneckRead The Grattan Institute’s full report: https://grattan.edu.au/report/more-homes-better-cities/The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Inflection Points, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.