Melbourne’s property market is on the slide but affordable housing providers Ingenia Communities and Lifestyle Communities are bucking the trend – and all in outer ring suburbs while they’re at it, as they sell homes to downsizing retirees.
House prices in outer ring or coastal fringe suburbs like Lara, Chelsea Heights and Ocean Grove are also rising instead of falling as first home buyers seek to get hold of affordable homes for their families.
Lifestyle Communities’ managing director James Kelly told Australian Financial Review this week that ‘the outer burbs are not seeing downturns that inner suburbs are seeing’.
The company has Melbourne development locations that include Warragul, Brookfield, Officer, Wollert and Tarneit and all of these have achieved solid growth over the last year.
According to Goldman Sachs analysts Michael Peet and Myron Xie, house prices in the catchments where Ingenia’s communities are have risen on average around 5 per cent over the last 12 months.
They say unlike the top end of the market which is soft, outer-ring suburbs where residential land lease communities are based are defying the trend.
“Last month we had the best month of new sales we’ve ever had,” Simon Owen from Ingenia told AFR.
“We took deposits or exchanged on 62 properties for the month.”
“I expect the solid market conditions we’re experiencing to continue for the next one to two years.”
