The Victorian Parliament’s Inquiry into the Supply of Homes in Regional Victoria has now released its report, with the submission prepared by Quantify Strategic Insights in partnership with Oliver Hume featuring prominently throughout.
Regional Victoria is at a turning point: rapid population shifts, rising house prices and rents, constrained “actual” land supply, and the high cost of delivering infrastructure and higher-density housing are putting real pressure on residents, local economies and essential services. If these challenges are not addressed, the promise of regional growth will be undermined by worsening affordability, deepening inequality and stalled investment.
Against this backdrop, the Inquiry’s report and the evidence underpinning it, takes on particular importance. It is therefore pleasing that our submission provides much of the analytical backbone of the Committee’s findings.
How our Submission shaped the Inquiry
Taken together, our submission is treated as a key source of data, frameworks and practical policy mechanisms that shape the report’s diagnosis of the problems and its recommended reforms. This includes:
The Committee relying on our work to explain who is moving to regional Victoria (25–34 year old families and 55–64 year old downsizers) and how that migration is reshaping demand and affordability.
Our critique of the Urban Development Program and our concept of “actual land supply”, including the factors that really determine whether land can be developed, being reproduced in the report and carried through into Recommendation 17, which explicitly calls for UDP to move from theoretical to actual land supply based on development readiness, market feasibility and realistic delivery timeframes.
Our feasibility analysis for apartments and townhouses in regional cities being used to explain why higher-density infill has been so low (see below) and so difficult to deliver under current cost and price settings, and why planning and zoning reforms, streamlined approvals and targeted incentives are needed.
What this says about Quantify
Quantify Strategic Insights’ contribution to the report exemplifies our core capabilities: translating complex datasets into clear narratives, connecting policy ambition with market reality, and supporting governments, industry and institutions to make decisions that are both aspirational and achievable. Good intentions don’t build homes – evidence-based planning and realistic land supply do.
These same capabilities underpin Quantify’s work on regional and metropolitan housing strategies, market assessments, feasibility analysis and policy advocacy.
Putting Evidence at the Centre of Victoria’s Housing Future
The Inquiry shows how independent evidence can turn a political debate into a practical delivery conversation: by revealing both the opportunities – new households, new communities, surplus land that could support affordable housing – and the constraints – costs, infrastructure gaps and planning settings that hold back delivery.
As Victoria grapples with housing shortages over the coming years, keeping robust evidence at the centre of decision-making will be critical to moving from broad ambitions to real homes built in the places people want and need to live – and this is exactly the space in which Quantify operates. For more information you can find the full submission here, or contact Rob Burgess ([email protected]) or Angie Zigomanis ([email protected])
