Every state now has a flagship housing program with a very large number attached to it. Queensland says its Residential Activation Fund has unlocked more than 100,000 homes. New South Wales says its Housing Delivery Authority has built a pipeline of 150,000. South Australia says it has released land for more than 50,000.

Add the headline figures together and they comfortably exceed the entire National Housing Accord target of 1.2 million homes.

Almost none of those homes exist yet.

That is not an accusation of dishonesty. It is a definitional problem, and it is the single most useful thing for a builder to understand about this wave of government housing announcements. The programs are measuring different things, at different points in the delivery chain, and calling all of them homes.

Below is what each jurisdiction has announced, what stage that number actually represents, and how the state is tracking against its share of the Accord according to the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, which is the only body applying a consistent measure across all eight jurisdictions.

The numbers, side by side

Program figures are the most recent published by each government. Accord tracking is from the Council’s March 2026 quarterly report, which measures completions to the September 2025 quarter and approvals to January 2026.

Sources: Queensland Government (aplacetocallhome.initiatives.qld.gov.au, EDQ); NSW Government ministerial release, 7 July 2026; Planning Victoria; SA Department for Housing and Urban Development; WA 2026-27 State Budget; Homes Tasmania; NT Department of Lands, Planning and Environment; ACT Government. Accord target apportionment and tracking: National Housing Supply and Affordability Council Quarterly Report, March 2026.

The four stages, and why the gap between them matters

Read the middle column of that table again. The programs are sitting at four completely different points in the delivery chain.

• Planning capacity. Victoria’s 300,000 figure is theoretical dwelling capacity created by zoning changes around 60 train and tram activity centres, measured out to 2051. Nobody has proposed those homes. The rules simply now allow them.
• Declared or proposed. The NSW Housing Delivery Authority number counts proposals that have been declared State Significant, meaning they get a faster assessment pathway. A declaration is permission to apply, not permission to build.
• Constraint removed. Queensland’s RAF figure counts homes on land where a trunk infrastructure barrier has been funded away. The water, sewer and road capacity will exist. Whether a developer proceeds is a separate commercial decision.
• Actually delivered. The NT’s 133 titled lots and Tasmania’s subdivision counts sit here. Small numbers, but they are real lots with real titles.

The gap between stage one and stage four is where housing programs have historically died. And for the first time, one of these programs is now old enough to show us the conversion rate.

New South Wales just published the most honest number in Australian housing

The NSW Housing Delivery Authority has been running since December 2024. Its 7 July update reports 484 proposals declared, representing about 150,000 potential homes. Buried further down the same release is the figure that actually matters: fourteen projects approved, unlocking more than 2,500 homes, with another 74 development applications lodged representing around 26,000 homes.

That is roughly 1.7 per cent of the declared pipeline approved after eighteen months.

Credit where it is due. NSW publishes the funnel. Most jurisdictions publish only the top of it. And the trajectory is genuinely improving, from six approvals in May to eight in June to fourteen in July. But the number is a useful reality check on every other headline in the table, because there is no reason to think Queensland or Victoria would convert their pipelines at a dramatically better rate.

NSW has also stacked reform on reform to close that gap, including the Development Coordination Authority replacing 22 separate referral doors, and build-or-lose conditions requiring construction within twelve months of approval. Those conditions exist precisely because a pipeline that does not move is worth nothing.

Queensland is spending the most on the actual bottleneck

Queensland’s approach is the most directly relevant to builders because it targets the constraint most likely to be holding up a specific job. Queensland’s Residential Activation Fund pays for trunk infrastructure, the water mains, sewer connections and road upgrades that make land developable. Round 1 committed almost $994 million across 97 projects. Round 2 has been doubled to $1 billion after 209 submissions, and the government now puts the cumulative figure above 100,000 homes unlocked.

Running alongside it, the Land Activation Program takes a different lever, releasing under-used government land. Since February it has put more than 21 hectares to market with around 3,000 hectares under assessment. The first builders named at Banyo will deliver more than 450 homes on a 6.4 hectare former Energy Queensland site.

The caution on Queensland is the same as everywhere else. Removing an infrastructure constraint does not oblige anyone to build. Feasibility, finance and trade availability still decide whether a shovel goes in the ground. Queensland is tracking at 17 per cent of its Accord share built, with completions up 4 per cent, and is projected to reach its target in September 2030.

South Australia is the one genuinely beating its own benchmark

SA gets less national coverage than the eastern states and is arguably outperforming them. More homes were completed in South Australia in the year to March 2026 than in any year on record, passing the state’s own target of 13,500 homes a year. Its $1.5 billion water and sewer program has laid 34 kilometres of pipe and directly unlocked more than 9,400 allotments, which is a delivery statistic rather than a capacity one.

The state has also been willing to move on density where it counts, including height limits lifted at Southwark Grounds. Even so, SA sits at 19 per cent of its Accord share built and is not projected to reach its target until September 2030. Beating your own target and meeting your Accord share are two different tests.

The states quietly doing best are not the ones with the biggest announcements

Here is the finding that cuts against the press releases. The three jurisdictions tracking closest to the June 2029 deadline are Victoria, Western Australia and the ACT, each projected to land in September 2029. Two of those three have relatively modest flagship programs.

WA is at 22 per cent built with completions up 16 per cent, the strongest completions growth in the country, on the back of an Infrastructure Development Fund supporting just over 10,000 homes. That is a fraction of Queensland’s headline number. Its four development sites released in Perth amounted to about 200 lots. Small announcements, better conversion.

Victoria is at 23 per cent built despite approvals falling 1 per cent and completions falling 12 per cent over the year, which tells you it is coasting on work commenced earlier rather than accelerating. The ACT is at 23 per cent with approvals up 117 per cent, the largest jump nationally, following its Missing Middle reforms.

The pattern worth noting is that headline program size and delivery performance are close to uncorrelated. NSW has the largest declared pipeline in the country and the latest projected completion date of any state at June 2031.

The small jurisdictions have a different problem entirely

Tasmania is at 12 per cent of its Accord share with completions down 16 per cent, projected to finish in September 2033. The Northern Territory is at 5 per cent, projected past 2034, despite approvals rising 38 per cent. Their programs are correspondingly small: Homes Tasmania subdivisions of 55 to 104 lots, Crown land at Sulphur Creek rezoned parcel by parcel, and the NT titling 133 lots in a day and calling it a Territory first.

In markets that size, planning reform is not the binding constraint. Industry capacity is. There are only so many crews, and a rezoning does not create one.

What this actually means for your business

Three practical takeaways.

• Translate the headline before you plan around it. When a program announces homes unlocked, find out which of the four stages it sits at. A declared proposal might be five years from a slab. A funded trunk main might be eighteen months from lots being titled. Those are different business decisions.
• Follow the infrastructure money, not the target. Targets are political. Funded enabling works are contractual. Queensland’s RAF project list, SA’s water and sewer program and WA’s Infrastructure Development Fund all name specific locations with committed money. That is a far better forward indicator of where lots will actually appear than any state-wide number.
• Expect the conversion rate to stay low. If NSW is any guide, only a small share of any declared pipeline becomes an approval within two years. Do not staff up or buy plant against a pipeline figure. Staff up against lodged applications and approved projects in your catchment.

The honest summary

Nationally, 219,000 homes were completed in the first five quarters of the Accord. The country is 18 per cent of the way through a target it is a bit over 40 per cent of the way through in time. No jurisdiction is projected to hit its share by June 2029. The national date is June 2030, and that estimate was made before the Middle East conflict began pushing construction costs up.

The programs in the table are not theatre. Rezonings, trunk infrastructure and faster assessment pathways are all real interventions addressing real bottlenecks, and the approvals data suggests several of them are working. The problem is that they are being reported at the point of announcement rather than the point of delivery, which makes a pipeline look like a result. As we noted covering the State of the Housing System report, the progress is genuine and so is the shortfall.

For builders, the discipline is simple. Count slabs, not press releases.

THE GOOD BUILDER TAKE

There is nothing wrong with governments announcing pipelines. The pipeline has to exist before the homes do. What is worth watching is which states publish the whole funnel and which publish only the top of it.

NSW telling us that fourteen of 484 proposals have been approved is more useful to a builder than any six-figure headline. If more jurisdictions reported that way, the industry could plan properly. Until they do, treat every unlocked homes figure as a maximum, not a forecast.

Frequently asked questions

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This article is intended for general information purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, or professional advice. Laws, regulations, and industry requirements vary by state and territory and change over time. Builders and trades professionals should seek independent advice relevant to their specific circumstances before making business, legal, or financial decisions.

Author: TGB Editorial