Costly Red Tape Chokes Tasmania’s Housing Supply

For many Tasmanians, the dream of building their own home has become a bureaucratic nightmare. While politicians from all sides talk about solving the housing crisis, the reality on the ground is that the state’s own regulations are making it more expensive and difficult to build.

An experienced tradesperson, who recently moved back to Tasmania after years in New South Wales, discovered firsthand how the state’s Building Act 2016 has created a system of needless red tape, massive delays and financial burdens that simply don’t exist elsewhere. After appealing to numerous state MPs and even the Premier with a detailed account of these extra costs—from compulsory private certifications to months of waiting for approval—he’s been met with a deafening silence.

His story is a powerful indictment of a system that seems more interested in protecting a few private players than in helping ordinary Tasmanians build a roof over their heads.

Hi Jeremy

If you are concerned about the high cost of housing in Tasmania as your party has stated pre election I thought I would draw your attention to an area you may not be familiar with but should be, as our Premier, regarding the extra costs involved in building a home in Tasmania compared to New South Wales.

Fifteen years ago my family left Tasmania and moved up to the Nambucca valley shire in New South Wales where we designed and constructed two of our own homes. The most recent home was only finished in March 2024 which due to allergy problems I had, associated with living in a hot humid environment, we sold in April 2024, and moved back to Tassie and purchased a block of land in north east Tasmania.

As a tradesperson (carpenter/cabinet maker) I have a huge amount of building experience and over some 40 years I have built 6 homes for myself in various states and overseas.

Plus I have built a couple for other family members along with renovating a few others, so I am well aware of what is required to design and build my own home and have done them incredibly cheaply and to a high quality as I have experience in carpentry, block laying, roofing, tiling, plastering, painting, concreting, metal fixing, kitchen building etc and always use when available second hand material/fittings etc to reduce costs further.

I was shocked to find out that while I was away living interstate Tasmania has installed a new Building Act in 2016.

This new Act has essentially privatised the process for an individual who wants to apply for permission to build their own home. This has hugely increased the red tape costs and the time required to obtain planning permission in Tasmania compared to my most recent experience in the Nambucca shire in New South Wales. The planning application process in Tasmania is painfully slow and is way more expensive for no reason that I can see.

In the present age of poor housing affordability it seems crazy to impose extra costs on building ones own home as privatisation seems to be the only point of the 2016 Building Act, not cheaper homes or less red tape for the self builder, but increased costs and slower times, more red tape and hurdles to jump and fees to pay to private third parties when compared to New South Wales.

I have been keeping a list of the differences in the costs for the various stages of a new home build in New South Wales compared to Tasmania and I thought you may be interested in how much more it costs in Tasmania.

Lets assume a purchase price of $320,000.

Tasmania also has this card shuffling game that the engineer, building designer and surveyor have to provide forms 55 and forms 35 before the application can be lodged.

In New South Wales they do not because the NSW state licensed engineers plans are all that are needed – further reducing time and costly delays.

As you can see from the above figures, Tasmania’s current Building Act, which enforces compulsory use of private sector for bushfire assessment, an energy efficiency certificate and a building designer along with increased costs and fees at every other stage hugely increases the costs of an owner build project for no betterment or improvement of the finished home project compared to New South Wales.

In actual fact our new home will be less energy efficient in Tasmania compared to if it was in New South Wales as we have been forced to squander 20% extra costs on private sector involvement and extra Tasmanian fees and charges, plus renting while waiting seven and a half months for approval. This equates to some $18000+ less to spend on a solar battery, induction cooktop, heatpump and hotwater which would hugely lower our homes carbon emissions and bills over its lifetime.

It’s standard knowledge in the building industry that using an architect or building designer can add over 10% to the cost of building a home, so why would a Tasmanian government be foolish enough to make using them compulsory?

There are numerous other reasons why the compulsory use of a building designer makes homes more expensive as they have no knowledge of the building materials we have collected and our building skills, and how we want to live in our building, so they simply cannot design a better building than us the owner builders can do for ourselves. All they can add is time delays and extra cost.

Waiting 7 months for building approval in Tasmania compared to 4 to 6 weeks in New South Wales shows how out of touch and antiquated the Tasmanian Building Act is in an era where housing is unaffordable.

We badly need a new Building Act that eliminates this private sector red tape and added costs as your state Liberal government has failed Tasmanians in a time of housing cost crisis.

Every other self builder I have spoken to since arriving back in Tasmania has stated it has taken them over a year to obtain planning permission in Tasmania.

That is plainly nuts, their houses should have been built in that time frame, the present Building Act is seriously broken and punishing Tasmanians when our laws should be about smoothing and speeding up applications to build a home.

If you only removed the compulsory use of private building designers in Tasmanian building regulation our home would be more than $16,000 cheaper, which is a huge amount on a small $88,000 budget cheap build.

Hopefully my email will help you with your input into what needs to be done to make housing costs cheaper for Tasmanians.

I have had Tasmanian building designers quote me an hourly rate higher than the engineers rate and I have had building designers claim they are engineers when they in fact are not. The experience in Tasmania is expensive and dodgy.

From my previous experience when I purchased a block of land to build a home, I obtained a soil test while the purchase contract is still being finalised. I draw out my plans, elevations and the sitemap then I engage an engineer. This means that on the day the land is mine I am ready to to go with the engineer and I can lodge my plans in a few weeks of the building block being mine.

However in Tasmania our crazy regulations prevent this from happening, as we cannot design are own home, or draw out the plans, we cannot research our own BAL fire rating and we cannot input our construction method into a government energy efficiency site to obtain an energy certificate stating the house meets current energy regulations like an owner builder can in New South Wales.

In Tasmania it is like some people have sat down and designed a planning process that is as slow as they can possibly make it and as expensive for the builder as they can possibly make!

I would be quite happy to meet up with you to further discuss these needless extra costs and red tape delays so I can explain how expensive and ridiculous they are in the current age of super slow build times and high cost building regulation red tape at any time of your choosing – if your government is indeed serious about lowering the cost of housing in Tasmania.

Name and address withheld.

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