With Ballarat's real estate market growing at a rate of knots and median prices continuing to rise, the president of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria has called for local governments to open the floodgates on new home builds.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Ballarat's median house price has risen nearly 10 per cent, from $412,000 to $450,000, in the last 12 months to the end of March while rental vacancy rates have reduced from 2.6 per cent to just 1.5 per cent.
REIV president Leah Calnan said the growth follows many discovering the ability to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"If we look across regional Victoria, most regional areas within a two to two-and-a-half-hour range from metro Melbourne will most probably continue to see a higher level of growth over the coming years and that's because it's really still easy to commute to metro, you can live up here and still have potential employment in metro and do two or three days a week in there," she said.
IN OTHER NEWS:
However, Ms Calnan said the growth created new challenges and stresses on the existing services of regional areas including hospitals and schools, but also small businesses such as hairdressers, and also created issues around the rental vacancy rate.
"On the ground today, property managers are saying that there is a real concern and they're seeing the trend around homelessness. People are living in their cars, so if we go to reduce that, we need to look at how we can facilitate additional properties coming into the local area," she said.
Ms Calnan said facilitating more land releases and new builds was the solution.
"What we need to be seeing happening at local government level, they need to be fast tracking the release of land, they need to be working with developers in order to cut the red tape and move land so that there's an opportunity for developers to be able to get in there, build these properties so it will create more opportunity for people to be able to buy in the local area," she said.
"If we look at the land that's available and Ballarat has a lot of land opportunities here, so if we cut that red tape and move property or move the ability for people to be able to have those land releases and look at those building opportunities, it's going to go towards reducing the concerns in the housing market.
"It's not going to completely solve it but you've got to get that red tape removal now and you've got to have a plan for it to be removed for the next five to 10 years, really."
However, for that to happen and not further overload services, Ms Calnan said all levels of government would have to come to the party.
"If you think of what your population is at the moment and whether or not the hospitals can actually sustain that, if you're going to add another 10, 20, 50,000 people into the City of Ballarat, what effect is that going to have on the services? That's got to be part of the planning at local government level and at state government level as well," she said.
"We love the fact that people have the ability to move and enjoy the lifestyle, we love on some levels to see property growth, but the consequences are those support services that facilitate the entire community will be challenged at the moment and potentially for a little while."
If you are seeing this message you are a loyal digital subscriber to The Courier, as we made this story available only to subscribers. Thank you very much for your support and allowing us to continue telling Ballarat's story. We appreciate your support of journalism in our great city.