The inner western suburbs of Melbourne are becoming a highly sought-after location for first-home buyers trying to crack into the soaring housing market.
Since the start of the year, trendy first-home buyers are having to let go of hopes of snaffling something in the inner-east and are moving out of rentals in those areas and targeting places like Footscray, Seddon, Yarraville and Kingsville.
Real estate agents are reporting large numbers of prospective buyers looking to move across to the west or further up north.
The latest Domain House Price Report shows Melbourne’s median house price rising 4.8 per cent to $974,397 over the three months to March.
Village Real Estate’s Joseph Luppino works out of his Seddon office and spoke to Domain.
“Whenever the market takes off, like it is now, we see a lot more people coming across from places like Richmond, Cremorne, South Yarra, Prahran and Windsor,” he said.
“What we find is that they’ve often already been looking over in the east for a year or more and they come over here and realise they can buy something for up to a third of the price or they can buy a family home instead of an apartment.”
For perspective, the median house price in Prahran is $1,637,000 compared to $854,000 in Footscray or $1,063,000 in Seddon.
“There are still a lot of people from the east who think it’s the wild, wild west. It’s a mindset thing,” Mr Luppino told Domain.
“But they come over and discover places like Seddon and Kingsville and Footscray and see that there are cafes and restaurants and wine bars and the same type of demographic and the same type of cool, and then it becomes a value proposition where they can buy a house instead of an apartment and still be the same distance from the city.”
Rebecca Towns is from Brad Teal Pascoe Vale and says she has noticed more people looking at her home opens from further away in recent times.
“Normally we find that the majority of people attending our opens are from one or two nearby postcodes, but lately we’ve been seeing a lot more people from the other side of town, from places like Richmond and South Yarra,” she told Domain.
“Up to 50 per cent of the people who attend our opens at the moment aren’t on our database. That’s been a huge shift and tells us they’re coming from a lot further away than normal.”
