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Home buyers look to infill developments to solve Melbourne’s planning problems

 This article was first published by  on the 19th Sept 2016 via domian.com.au | Image: Like many first-home buyers, Dayle Memery and Nick Weir did not want to live on the fringe or in an apartment tower. Photo: Frasers Property
 

When Dayle Memery and partner Nick Weir started looking for their first home, they found themselves stuck with the familiar predicament of young buyers: move to Melbourne’s fringe or live in a small apartment.

 

Ms Memery, 26, was already sick of commuting three hours a day from her family home outside Bacchus Marsh to her job at St Vincent’s Hospital and city-boy Mr Weir, 27, had written off living on the outskirts of town entirely. Having grown up in the country, Ms Memery also knew capital growth outside greater Melbourne was a dire prospect.

 

“It’s very frustrating, I think people have expectations that you should just go further out of the city and work hard to get closer in,” Ms Memery said.

 

“But ultimately, if we bought further out, we’d be looking at staying 15 years to get our money back. We thought, ‘we won’t see that money for ages’.”

 

An apartment in one of the countless towers going up around the inner city was not an option — Ms Memery had two border collies to think about.

 

But each auction they attended of an established home closer to the city went $100,000, sometimes $200,000, above their budget.

 

Planning research widely suggest living on the fringe has other costs, including private transport, energy use and the availability of jobs. Photo: Wayne Taylor

Planning research widely suggest living on the fringe has other costs, including private transport, energy use and the availability of jobs. Photo: Wayne Taylor

It’s a familiar dilemma to many first home buyers and one that planning experts say the city has to address.

 

“There is a growing market of house buyers and occupiers that want to live in existing urban areas that can’t afford the existing dwelling stock,” Dr Joe Hurley, RMIT planning researcher with the centre for Urban Research.

 

“We have to get away from this sense of two markets: a house on the fringe or investors buying boxy apartments in a tower … that’s a really polarised view form the market.”

 

Apartments in the inner-city often don’t suit the needs of first-home buyers. Photo: Teagan Glenane

Apartments in the inner-city often don’t suit the needs of first-home buyers. Photo: Teagan Glenane

Dr Hurley and his colleagues have signalled infill projects, the development of vacant or under-used parcels of land within existing urban areas, and brownfield developments, the repurposing of land previously used for for something else, as a potential answer to Melbourne’s housing dichotomy.

 

“It has to be [the answer],” Dr Hurley said. “The critical question is how we create the environment for that to be done right.”

 

For Ms Memery and Mr Weir, infill fit the bill. A fortuitous drive past a sign advertising a new development on a demolished TAFE site in Avondale Heights led them to their perfect compromise: a three-bedroom townhouse, 12 km north-west of the CBD.

 

For Dayle Memery and Nick Weir, an infill development in Avondale Heights fit the bill. Photo: Frasers Property

For Dayle Memery and Nick Weir, an infill development in Avondale Heights fit the bill. Photo: Frasers Property

“It’s not our dream home but we can get our foot in the market,” Ms Memery said. “And I cannot wait to live closer to town.”

 

Melbourne’s planning research widely suggest that living on the fringe has its own associated costs, including private transport, energy use and the availability of jobs.

 

“There’s good research now that shows there’s significant latent demand from certain buyers to say, ‘I would sacrifice the big house, I would pay the same price for a four-bedroom three-bathroom house as I would for a three-bedroom apartment that’s five kilometres from the CBD, compared to living out the back of Melton,” Dr Hurley said.

 

First-home buyers are often priced out of the established housing market. Photo: Ken Irwin

First-home buyers are often priced out of the established housing market. Photo: Ken Irwin

 

But while infill and brownfield developments are becoming increasingly more common, they are often a harder ask for developers.

 

Theo Della Bosca, development director for Frasers, the developer behind the Avondale Heights projects, said there was not many available sites.

 

“And when you find the site there, are invariably issues associated with them based on their former use,” Mr Della Bosca said, pointing to one project that was developed on an old pharmaceutical site.

 

Patrick Archer, state manager of Cedar Woods, which has several infill projects across Melbourne including Camberwell, Footscray and Clayton South, said there was also the added expectations from surrounding communities to deal with.

 

“It can be more expensive than broadacre sites,” he said. “There’s only a certain number of them.”

 

And yet both developers have reported almost sold out projects, highlighting the huge demand for such housing.

 

For many of the large volume builders and developers who don’t do infill projects, they have little incentive to change, Dr Hurley said.

 

“If you’re a volume builder, a sticks and bricks volume builder, who builds houses that are brick veneer on the fringe, and you’re all geared up to do that, they run really tight margins, they require cash flow and to change the way you build are where you build is difficult,” he said.

 

“But it’s not good enough from a policy point of view to say, ‘therefore we can’t change’. We need to work with industry but also create a policy environment that create impetus for that change.”