The government planned to build 1500 homes in Sydney – so why did it quietly quit the projects?
The state-owned developer has admitted three housing plans are no longer feasible. It’s a growing problem developers are facing.
The government planned to build 1500 homes in Sydney – so why did it quietly quit the projects?
The state government’s own development agency has quietly abandoned plans to build up to 1500 homes on Sydney’s western fringes, admitting the projects were no longer commercially feasible.
Landcom, a NSW government-owned business responsible for developing land across the state for new homes, had since 2021 been planning housing projects for Tallawong and Rooty Hill in the north-west and Austral in the south-west. But, in December, all information on the projects disappeared from Landcom’s website, with the developer posting one final update: “Development not proceeding.”
An artist’s impression of the planned housing development in Austral that Landcom has now abandoned.Credit: Landcom
After “technical investigations and feasibility assessments”, Landcom said in its update that it had decided to “instead focus on opportunities at other sites in metropolitan Sydney and regional NSW that can support the NSW government’s housing agenda”.
Its decision not to proceed with the large-scale low-density housing projects highlights the growing difficulties developers are facing when building in western Sydney. It underscores a central irony of the government developer’s task to build homes in areas that require more housing and to make a profit on them. Often, the reason those areas have a limited housing supply is that developers don’t build there because they cannot make a profit from it.
The ditched projects were all in the early planning stages: a development application for the subdivision of the Rooty Hill project was expected to be lodged with Blacktown City Council in late 2025 for construction to begin in 2026, but it was never submitted. The project would have delivered 300 to 500 homes opposite the Blacktown International Sports Park.
The Tallawong development off Guntawong Road began as a 2022 development application to Blacktown council to create five “superlots”, but it was withdrawn shortly after. According to the timeline on an archived version of the project’s webpage, Landcom planned to submit a new development application to Blacktown council and begin selling housing lots by the end of 2025. Neither occurred.
