Tamworth housing crisis: forum highlights city needs to double lots for new builds to house 100,000 by 2041

The region's housing crisis was at the centre of concerns from bankers, developers, real estate agents, builders, buyers and the social housing industry at a forum on Thursday morning.

Business as usual growth rates have the city expanding by 1.3 per cent per year, Tamworth Regional Council (TRC) planning and compliance director Gina Vereker said.

That number will need to be much closer to 2.5 per cent to achieve a population of 100,000 by 2041. At that rate, 1041 new homes would need to be built each year and 600 lots released.

"In order to achieve that we need to look at what we're doing now, how many lots we're bringing out and whether that's going to meet that aspirational target," she said.

"It's not just about what the council's doing, it's about industry working together so that we can solve this problem and end up being able to house not only the current population but our future population of 100,000 people.

"We're doing lots of things, we're reviewing our Local Environmental Plan to look at changing the zonings in some areas so you can go from a single-dwelling to a multi-development."

A panel of local experts from PRD Tamworth's Mark Sleiman, Single Builders' Mark Single, NAB business bank executive Warrick Grieve and Homes North operations manager Richard Innes gave a picture of the issues within their industries that contribute to the crisis.

It was suggested that Tamworth could consider a temporary housing register for spare rooms, granny flat options for social housing and incentives for businesses to leave the CBD and move to industrial areas to make more space for houses.

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Ray White director Malcolm Campbell said Tamworth is among the top 20 towns being searched on certain real estate sites.

He said there was some concern about investment properties due to Office of Fair Trading (OFT) policies that favour the tenant.

"In the last few years there has been a skew with the OFT which has gone more in favour of tenants which is borking and concerning some investors that come in because they don't feel they had the rights they previously had and that's an issue," he said.

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