932 Homes on Former Golf Course is a good thing
Melbourne has been short of homes for years — so why does it take a closed golf course to get 932 of them approved?
A closed golf course in Melbourne's south-east is about to become a neighbourhood. The Victorian government has approved 932 homes on the former Kingswood Golf Course in Dingley Village, along with 10 hectares of open space, playgrounds, walking trails, and a safe pedestrian connection to a local primary school. The site has been sitting idle since 2018. That is eight years of manicured grass doing nothing for anyone. Turning it into homes is the right call.
Location is what separates a good development from a mediocre one
The case for adding housing supply is not complicated, even if the politics around it usually are. Melbourne has a chronic shortage of homes relative to demand. That shortage shows up in rents and prices that have outpaced wages for years. The mechanism is elementary: when the quantity of a thing is constrained below what people want, the price goes up. When you add more of it, the pressure eases. It takes time, it does not work uniformly across every price point overnight, but it works. We have covered this before, including in our analysis of the Richmond public housing redevelopment at Highett Street.
What makes the Kingswood site a better-than-average example of this principle is the location. The project sits close to schools, early childhood centres, multiple bus routes, and the recently upgraded Mordialloc Freeway. This is not a greenfield estate carved out of paddocks an hour from anything useful, where residents will spend a decade waiting for a supermarket. The infrastructure is mostly already there. The homes will be occupied by people who can actually get to work, get kids to school, and live their lives without a car for every errand. That matters, because well-located housing is worth more to the system than poorly-located housing of the same volume.
The structural problem with most Australian housing policy is that it subsidises buyers rather than building homes.
The approval process looks more serious than the average ministerial announcement
The process behind the approval also looks more serious than the average ministerial announcement. The plan was shaped through consultation with Kingston Council and Melbourne Water, with flood and drainage modelling built into the approval conditions rather than deferred. A walking connection to Dingley Village Primary School was identified through community feedback and incorporated into the design. Hundreds of existing trees will be retained and thousands more planted. The 20 per cent open space requirement is not a rounding error, it is roughly equivalent to two full MCG ovals set aside as public green space. None of this is window dressing when you look at the history of developments that skipped these steps and left communities holding the infrastructure costs.
The affordable housing requirement deserves a clear-eyed assessment too. Ten per cent affordable housing built into a 932-dwelling development means roughly 93 homes that are priced or managed below market rate. That is not transformative on its own, but it is not nothing either, and it is more durable than a demand-side subsidy that gets capitalised into prices. As we noted in our piece on the distinction between more-affordable homes and more affordable homes, the structural problem with most Australian housing policy is that it subsidises buyers rather than building homes. A requirement baked into a development approval at least produces actual dwellings.
One development cannot carry the work of a housing policy
There are honest caveats. The development will be built in stages, and the approval conditions tie each stage to infrastructure delivery. That is a sensible sequencing mechanism, but it does mean 932 homes will not appear quickly. Construction timelines in Victoria have been stretched by cost pressures and labour constraints across the industry. Some of these homes are probably a decade away from settlement. The pressure on the housing market in the intervening period is not going to be relieved by a project that has not yet broken ground.
It is also worth being clear about what one development cannot do. Nine hundred and thirty-two homes is meaningful, but Melbourne adds tens of thousands of new residents every year. Kingswood is one course, and there are not an unlimited number of closed golf courses available for rezoning. The solution to the housing shortage is not a single project, it is a sustained programme of decisions like this one, taken repeatedly, in the face of the local opposition that almost always greets them. Victoria has also been pursuing broader zoning and planning reforms, and the adjacent work Queensland has done on housing code simplification suggests there is genuine appetite for supply-side reform across jurisdictions.
That is the real test of whether this approval matters: not whether it solves the problem by itself, because it cannot, but whether it represents a pattern of decision-making that accumulates into something. On the evidence available, Kingswood looks like a well-sited, properly planned, supply-adding development on land that was doing precisely nothing. Eight years of unused fairways is long enough. Build the homes.
Sources
Victorian Government — More Homes And Open Space At Former Golf Course
The Bearing — It's about supply and demand. More homes brings the price down
The Bearing — More-affordable homes, or more affordable homes?
The Bearing — Housing code simplification might actually make more homes
Frequently Asked Questions
Does building more homes actually bring housing prices down?
Yes, though the effect takes time and does not operate uniformly across every price point at once. When housing supply is constrained below demand, prices rise; adding stock eases that pressure. The effect is strongest in well-located areas where new homes are genuinely substitutable for existing ones.
What is the affordable housing requirement in the Kingswood Golf Course development?
Ten per cent of the 932 dwellings — roughly 93 homes — must be priced or managed below market rate. This is built into the development approval conditions rather than delivered through a separate subsidy, which means it produces actual dwellings rather than inflating buyer purchasing power.
How long will it take to build the 932 homes at the former Kingswood Golf Course?
The development will be built in stages, with each stage tied to infrastructure delivery. Given current construction cost pressures and labour constraints in Victoria, some of these homes are likely a decade away from settlement.
Why is it better to build homes on former golf courses than on greenfield land on the urban fringe?
Former golf courses like Kingswood are typically surrounded by existing infrastructure — schools, transport, shops — that new residents can use immediately. Greenfield estates on the urban fringe often lack this infrastructure for years after construction, increasing car dependence and delaying the full economic and social benefit of the new housing.
Can rezoning old golf courses solve Melbourne's housing shortage?
Not on its own. Melbourne grows by tens of thousands of residents each year, and there are a finite number of closed golf courses available for rezoning. The Kingswood approval matters not as a singular solution but as an example of the kind of decision that needs to be made repeatedly and at scale across many different sites and planning mechanisms.