Commentary

Mark Kilroy examines whether robotics, modular housing and automated manufacturing could reduce Australian construction costs, and how quantity surveyors and government can prepare.

Mark Kilroy considers what AI, robotics and automation could mean for Australian productivity, workforce planning, migration, housing and long-term prosperity.

Mark Kilroy examines the pressure higher interest rates place on mortgage holders and argues for greater attention to government spending, construction capacity, housing supply, energy and productivity in Australia's inflation debate.

Mark Kilroy examines how AI-related changes to work could affect income durability, mortgage resilience and the ability to hold property. The argument is not against buying, but for giving long-term ownership pressures as much attention as borrowing capacity at purchase.

Australia is targeting 1.2 million new homes, but approved projects still need finance on viable terms. Mark Kilroy examines the capital chain behind housing supply and how funding choices can shape who ultimately owns Australian housing.

Younger Australians are less likely to own homes than previous generations were at the same age. Mark Kilroy argues the deeper challenge is not only affordability, but restoring a credible pathway into durable ownership.

A large portfolio can create the appearance of wealth while hiding financial fragility. Mark Kilroy explains why equity, cash flow, liquidity and HOLD capacity need to be considered together.

The ATO has expanding access to property transaction and rental data, but long-term owners may struggle to prove decades of improvement costs and capital works adjustments. Mark Kilroy explains why accurate CGT cost-base records should be assembled before a property is sold.

Australia is restricting negative gearing while expanding taxpayer support for social and affordable housing. Mark Kilroy argues that these programs should be judged through transparent project-level reporting showing support per dwelling, ownership, investment returns, rents, long-term public benefit and the number of additional homes delivered for every taxpayer dollar.

AI data centres promise billions in investment, but Australia also supplies the land, electricity, infrastructure and construction capacity. Mark Kilroy argues that each project should face a national return test measuring ownership, permanent jobs, exports, local capability, infrastructure contributions and the long-term value Australia retains.

Australia needs a National HOLD Strategy, argues Mark Kilroy. Drawing on the lesson that buying an asset is only the beginning, he proposes separating national money into four clear pots: today's services, productive assets for tomorrow, wealth held for future generations and debt reduction. A proposed Australian Citizens Fund and individual Australia Share would convert part of the temporary income from resources, land and technology into permanent national ownership, reported each year through an Australia Statement.

The ABS Lending Indicators released on 14 August show investor home loan commitments fell 8.6% in the June 2026 quarter, with the value of investor lending down 10.2% — falls far steeper than for owner-occupiers. Investor loan numbers have dropped from 60,416 in December 2025 to 52,599 in June 2026, around 13% in six months. Mark Kilroy argues this is the first hard data suggesting investor behaviour may already be changing, warns that capital does not automatically flow where policy intends, and says the September quarter will reveal whether Australia is about to learn how much private investor capital its housing system actually needs.

Chartered quantity surveyor Mark Kilroy examines the question Brisbane 2032 planning keeps avoiding: who is actually going to build it? Queensland has promised 17 new and upgraded Olympic venues within a $7.1 billion envelope — but the independent Games infrastructure review estimated escalation had already added roughly $1.1 billion by March 2025, before major venue construction began. With the Queensland Audit Office projecting an average shortage of about 18,200 construction workers (peaking near 50,000), a $119 billion state capital program, a Queensland-wide Games footprint stretching 1,700 km from Brisbane to Cairns, and the Oxford Olympics Study's 156% average cost overrun as a warning, the piece argues the overlooked cost of the Games may be the homes that never get built — and calls for one consolidated, transparent picture of the full Olympic delivery program.

Mark Kilroy argues construction cost is only the first cheque. Most of an asset's long-term cost is locked in by design decisions made before completion: a $20 million construction saving can create $60 million in operating, maintenance and replacement costs over 30 years. He makes the case for asset registers built from day one, life cycle planning treated as financial planning, a broader definition of project success based on total cost of ownership, and a quantity surveying profession whose role does not stop at handover — increasingly powered by AI feeding real asset performance back into the next project.

Australia's tax system now gives qualifying Build-to-Rent developments a 4% Division 43 capital works deduction — a 25-year write-off — while an ordinary Australian buying one new investment property claims 2.5% over 40 years. Mark Kilroy examines what the Build-to-Rent depreciation concession means for who owns Australian housing: on $100 million of construction expenditure, the accelerated rate is worth an extra $1.5 million in deductions each year. With superannuation holding roughly $4.44 trillion and institutions like Aware Super building 2,000+ rental homes, the piece asks why the same accelerated-depreciation principle isn't extended to individuals who fund genuinely new dwellings, what institutional ownership means for smaller developers who rely on pre-sales, and why housing supply and home ownership supply are not the same thing.

Recap of the Gold Coast Central Chamber of Commerce Property Forum at The Star Gold Coast, organised by Mark Kilroy: 300+ developers, business leaders and property professionals examined how the Gold Coast accommodates growth toward one million people ahead of the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games. Mayor Tom Tate and Assistant Minister Rebecca Young provided government context before a panel of Adrian Puljich, Michael Matusik, Drew Bowie, Michael McNab and Andrew Gray, MC'd by developer Jack Corbett, debated construction costs, weak productivity, increasingly selective capital, modular construction financing hurdles, vertical communities, and whether a new home can be delivered below $750,000. The core takeaway: house prices can fall and Australia can still have a housing affordability and supply problem.

Quantity surveyors are the professionals who know what housing actually costs to deliver — yet they remain largely absent from Australia's housing debate. Mark Kilroy argues the profession must step forward: construction cost is only part of the story, with approvals, infrastructure charges, finance, insurance, escalation and delay shaping whether projects proceed at all. He calls for housing targets to be backed by independently tested cost plans, for the industry to publish aggregated de-identified evidence on why viable projects become unviable, for quantity surveyors to be involved before policies are set rather than pricing the consequences afterwards, and for the profession to communicate cost in language policymakers and the public can understand.

Australia measures housing progress in approvals, targets and rezonings — but an approval is not a completed home. Mark Kilroy argues the real crisis is feasibility: when required selling prices exceed what buyers can afford, projects simply don't proceed, no matter how many are approved. Writing from the Gold Coast, he calls for independently costing every new regulation, pricing the true cost of approval delays, and broadening what Australia calls a home — purpose-built co-living, backyard homes, modular construction, key-worker housing on institutional land, conversions and smaller homes — delivered without lowering standards.

Property owners have spent decades focused on annual deductions while ignoring what may become their largest tax bill: Capital Gains Tax at sale. Mark Kilroy argues the real blind spot is evidence — invoices lost, builders retired, depreciation schedules outdated — leaving owners unable to prove the capital expenditure that forms their property's cost base. With CGT rules changing from 1 July 2027, the question is no longer what you can claim this year, but whether you could justify every dollar of your cost base if you sold tomorrow.

Parliament has banned SMSFs from new limited recourse borrowing for residential property. Builders report 3,613 signed contracts for unbuilt homes are at risk, with 2,415 expected to be cancelled. Mark Kilroy argues the greater damage is hidden: lost pre-sales can push whole developments below their construction finance thresholds, so the projects that never start may cost far more homes than the contracts cancelled today. A targeted new-housing exemption would fix the inconsistency.

Australia's housing debate is fixated on supply: more land, more approvals, more density, more targets. But after 25 years across construction cost, property and taxation, Mark Kilroy argues we are avoiding the most important question: what does it actually cost to turn land into a completed home, and how much of the final price is not the land or the building? Every major construction project begins with a cost plan. Australia has housing targets. Where is the cost plan?

Twenty years ago, institutional ownership reshaped commercial property in the UK. Today, Australia is beginning the same conversation around housing — Build-to-Rent, superannuation capital, global pension funds. Australia needs that capital. But housing policy and ownership policy are not the same thing: a country can build more homes while creating fewer homeowners. The question worth asking is who we want to own Australia in twenty years' time.

Negative gearing, CGT and SMSF borrowing — three major reforms all pointing the same way: fewer tax concessions for everyday property investors, while institutional structures are treated differently. The question nobody wants to ask is not whether these reforms improve affordability, but who ends up owning Australia's homes.

Australia's housing debate centres on interest rates, supply, migration and tax. There's a fourth variable that rarely appears: whether the labour market that underpins mortgage demand will look anything like it does today within a decade. Every mortgage is a bet on future income — and AI is quietly reshaping the professional class those incomes depend on.

Australia's housing debate is consumed by interest rates, negative gearing, CGT and migration. Beneath all of it sits a much larger question almost nobody is willing to discuss: what happens to the housing market if white-collar work itself fundamentally changes over the next decade?

The most important part of Australia's negative gearing debate may have nothing to do with tax policy itself. It may be the banks. Formal policy changes are still years away, but lenders are already adjusting investor serviceability now — and housing markets ultimately run on credit, not political messaging.

For thirty years Australia ran a housing market on a single assumption — that investors could survive weak cash flow long enough to harvest long-term capital growth. Negative gearing and the CGT discount were the bridge. That bridge is now being dismantled from both ends, and the consequences run deeper than the fairness debate.

The May budget is days away and commentary on CGT, negative gearing and depreciation is running hot. But almost nobody is engaging with the mechanism that connects what you claim while you hold a property to what you pay when you sell it. Here's what the policy debate is missing.

Australia has 2.9 million temporary residents driving demand for over a million additional dwellings. Meanwhile the student visa pipeline is funnelling people into white-collar fields AI is already contracting, while construction trades sit at a 54% vacancy fill rate with Brisbane 2032 six years away.

The data tells a very different story to the headlines. 72% of property investors own just one property. 64% earn less than $80,000. The proposed negative gearing and CGT changes target 9.5% of investors, but the consequences flow through the entire rental market.

The headline figures suggest construction costs are moderating. The final accounts of completed projects tell a different story. Fuel, freight, and supply chain repricing are building forward, and most feasibility models have not caught up.

Under the current CGT system, inflation is taxable. If reform strips away the remaining protections without replacing them with anything better, everyday Australians will pay the price.

Most property commentary focuses on purchase. In practice, outcomes are decided later, during the hold, when cash flow pressure shapes behaviour and housing supply.

The real drivers behind cost blowouts are not materials or supply chains. It is labour, productivity, structural inefficiency, and holding pressure.

When depreciation is understood properly, it plays a quiet but critical role in whether investors can afford to hold assets through the most pressured years of ownership.