Mid-rise has overtaken detached housing as the building typology driving Australia’s housing growth, with established frame and truss supply chains now ceding ground in a market they have historically dominated. That is according to IndustryEdge Managing Director and AFWI Precinct Project Manager Tim Woods, who today addressed FTMA’s National Conference — At the Crossroads, Reframing the Growth — at Twin Waters on the Sunshine Coast.
Speaking to a room packed with frame and truss manufacturers, Woods said mid-rise approvals jumped more than 70 per cent in 2025 to add 7,800 dwellings to the national pipeline — the same volume uplift as freestanding houses and townhouses combined, with the latter two formats rising just 1.9 per cent and 20.5 per cent respectively. The segment was on track to entrench itself across the coming decade, Woods said, with mid-rise unlikely to retreat below current levels as Australia chases the 225,000 dwellings per year needed by 2034 to clear a preexisting national housing shortfall.
Australia’s freestanding house approvals have not delivered the volume needed in 30 years, with the highest-ever total of 132,000 reached in 1994 and peak completions of 124,500 dwellings recorded the following year. With the past decade averaging just 175,000 total completions annually — well below the 180,000 base demand line and the 225,000 catch-up rate identified in FWPA-funded research released in February 2025 — Woods said the maths no longer permitted the sector to lean on the detached format.
The stronger signal came from the 2025 trade data, which showed structural timber consumption declined 1.1 per cent across the calendar year despite a rising market in approvals. “That is an inflection point,” Woods told delegates, with LVL imports climbing 26 per cent to a probable record, prefabricated dwelling imports up 53 per cent and light gauge steel taking some share in mid-rise and high-rise construction.
Woods argued the steel sector’s gains came from solving builder and developer problems, which he said the timber industry has the products to address, but has yet to deliver as an integrated solution. Engineered wood products carry the embodied-carbon advantage, the material-flexibility advantage, and the quality-of-life advantage that light gauge steel lacks, yet still lose share because the sector has not pulled supply, design, manufacture, and installation into a single offer developers now demand across detached, townhouse, and mid-rise construction.
Woods urged the timber-frame sector to evolve its building systems to compete in mid-rise as the immediate priority, with high-rise a more cautious horizon. The next ten years would either secure timber’s place across the formats that will deliver Australia’s housing or shut it out of them, Woods said, with the slipping share no longer a theoretical risk worth observing.
The presentation ran alongside a panel discussion on the Forest and Wood Products Australia (FWPA) and Australian Forest and Wood Innovations (AFWI)-backed Future Frame Initiative, featuring Louise Wallis of the University of Tasmania, Australian Timber Development Association CEO Andrew Dunn, AFWI Deputy Director Patrick Mitchell and FWPA Head of Built Environment and Head of the WoodSolutions Programme Kevin Peachey. The AFWI side of the partnership is supported by a $200 million combined research pool, with $100 million in federal funding matched dollar-for-dollar by co-investment partners.
Pressed by delegates on the federal budget’s capital gains and negative gearing changes, Woods said the package would free up marginal dwellings sustained only by tax advantage, with apartment and flat stock flowing into the market over the coming year. The tax changes were not the principal driver of the housing market, Woods said, attributing the next leg of activity to underlying demand rather than fiscal settings.
Woods closed by telling delegates Australia would fall 1.02 million dwellings behind demand by 2034 if completions held at the past decade’s 175,000-per-year average — a shortfall equivalent to roughly 380,000 families on a 2.3-person household basis.
Please note: Wood Central will have additional coverage from the FTMA National Conference in the coming days.
