Perth’s planning wins are outrunning its ability to build

Density in Perth is far too often framed as a fight that local councils either win, lose or avoid altogether.

But results from two very different councils suggest there is a fourth option – doing it well before the fight even starts.

Apartments.com.au analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics building approvals data for the year to April 2026 recently revealed the City of Vincent and the City of Belmont now rank among Western Australia’s strongest performers for approved townhouse and apartment dwellings.

The City of Vincent’s approvals rose from 18 new townhouses in 2023-24 to 199 apartments and townhouses the following year, concentrated in projects such as the Sydney Charles Quarter development in the Pickle District and Alma Square in North Perth.

Over the same period, the City of Belmont’s approvals climbed from 155 to 396, centred on Rivervale and the Great Eastern Highway corridor.

Both councils have spent years directing density toward town centres, transport corridors and renewal precincts while leaving established residential streets largely untouched – a strategy which requires nominating growth locations well ahead of any individual application and holding that position when it inevitably attracts objection from someone.

Sustaining growth of this scale across consecutive years, in areas which remain genuinely liveable and sought after, suggests these are planning frameworks that residents and developers have both found workable in practice, not just tolerable on paper.

Both councils were able to point to specific precincts, existing transport links and established town centres as the basis for where growth was directed, rather than treating density as something to be spread evenly and thinly across a local government area to minimise objection.

Whether this success is shared elsewhere is a different question. The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council’s State of the Housing System 2026 report found while national approvals for higher-density housing rose 30.1 per cent from 2023-24 to 2024-25, completions of that same higher-density stock actually fell 3.4 per cent over the same period.

Approvals, in aggregate, are increasingly there. Completions are not following at anything like the same pace.

The cities of Vincent and Belmont show what is possible when a council commits to a location-specific strategy well ahead of any application landing on its desk. What they cannot show is whether the wider system, financing, construction capacity and market conditions will convert that local success into finished homes any faster than the national trend suggests.

That remains the open question, and the answer will matter more to Perth’s housing task than any single council’s approval numbers.