Private speculation versus public inefficiency: which delays housing development more?

Housing supply in urban areas is often delayed due to various factors, which leads to persistent backlogs. While theories on development delay, such as regulatory inefficiencies and speculative developer strategies, have been extensively examined in Global North contexts, their relevance in rapidly urbanising environments remains underexplored. This study investigates how project characteristics and market conditions influence development timelines. Drawing on a dataset of 214 housing projects in a major Indonesian city, we examine the influence of land area, number of built units, building size, housing location, house price, and land price increases on the time taken for permit issuance and project completion. Our findings indicate that project characteristics exert a stronger influence than market dynamics. The analysis also reveals a distinctive sequencing inversion in which construction frequently precedes permit issuance. This finding highlights how discretionary enforcement and informal practices reconfigure conventional models of development timing. Overall, the study contributes to a more situated understanding of housing supply processes, emphasising the need to adapt theoretical frameworks to emerging Southern contexts.