Amelia Glass grew up playing with her family dog and swimming in the dam on her parents’ property in Maragret River \u2014 270 kilometres south of Perth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old student said she had always dreamed of returning to live in the town after finishing university.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Amelia Glass grew up in Maragret River and says she chose her degree with a career in the south-west in mind.\u00a0 (ABC South West: Madigan Landry)<\/p>\n
Ms Glass feels she is already priced out of her home town with a recent report showing it is one of nine areas in the south-west of WA with a median house price of $1 million.<\/p>\n
The report by Cotality revealed one in three housing markets nationwide hit the threshold for the so-called “million-dollar club” with holiday hotspots like Margaret River, Yallingup, Dunsborough and Cowaramup included.<\/p>\n
“I always thought Margaret River would be a cheap place to live because of the fact that we’re so far from the city and we have got all these new housing developments going in,” Ms Glass said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“But hearing that the price has now gone up even more \u2014 it’s kind of made the idea of living in Margaret River in the future much more daunting.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Amelia Glass hopes to live out the great Australian dream of home ownership but is concerned rising house prices will put that dream out of reach.\u00a0 (ABC South West: Madigan Landry)<\/p>\n
She said current government assistance schemes were not enough to allow people her age into the housing market.<\/p>\n
“It seems very out of reach to afford, especially if I’m going to be living alone as a young woman \u2014 that $1 million price tag makes it a challenge,” she said.<\/p>\n
“When you look back a couple of generations and see how easy it was for our grandparents to buy their own homes.<\/p>\n
“People my age with no dependents will find it incredible difficult to buy a home in the future unless they can rely on the bank of mum and dad.”<\/p>\n
In 2006 the median house price in Maragret River was just $475,000.\u00a0 (ABC South West: Madigan Landry)<\/p>\n
Regional lifestyle comes at a cost<\/p>\n
Economist Kaytlin Ezzy from property research company Cotality, said seven-figure median house prices used to be reserved for a small number of especially affluent areas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It really started as this prestige club that only a few suburbs across the country were part of,” she said.<\/p>\n
Julie Fairclough says the market is showing no sign of slowing down.\u00a0 (ABC South West: Jacqueline Lynch)<\/p>\n
Ms Ezzy said government assistance schemes did not help new home owners to manage mortgage repayments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“To buy a million-dollar household, your average household has to spend about 50-55 per cent of their income paying a mortgage,” she said.<\/p>\n
“For those on the 5 per cent deposit scheme, that jumps up to about 60 per cent, so it does raise the question of affordability for those buyers.”<\/p>\n
The coastal hamlet of Yallingup remains WA’s most expensive regional market with a median house price of more than $2 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Julie Fairclough says it is rare for a home in Dunsborough to be sold for less than $1 million \u2014 neighbouring Yallingup boasts a $2 million median house price. (ABC South West: Jacqueline Lynch)<\/p>\n
Just 10 minutes down the road in Dunsborough, real estate agent Julie Fairclough said the dream of owning a family home in the town was becoming less of a reality for homegrown locals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s extremely difficult to get a house under $900,000 in Dunsborough now, just a normal, family 3×1 or 4×2 is very difficult,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Development process taking too long<\/p>\n
South-west town planner Dane Gaunt said the region was suffering from a wide array of housing roadblocks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We’ve got a planning shortage but we can’t attract more planners to the region because they can’t find housing,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Gaunt said responsibility for the housing shortage in the region was shared.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I see a lot of projects get caught up in process and it might be at the state level, at the federal level, at the local government level, or it might be process on the developers side,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Dane Gaunt says the south-west faces challenges with establishing infrastructure and process delays when trying to provide more housing supply to the region.\u00a0 (ABC South West: Jacqueline Lynch)<\/p>\n
“In terms of specific barriers \u2014 enabling infrastructure is a big one \u2026 power infrastructure and sewer infrastructure is massive and causing a lot of delays.<\/p>\n
“It’s really important to accept everything has to go through a process but it’s not process for process’s sake.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amelia Glass grew up playing with her family dog and swimming in the dam on her parents’ property…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306495,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,174577,174576,174571,7688,10920,55826,174573,174572,1003,174574,174575,6771],"class_list":["post-306494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-dunsborough","tag-holiday-hotspots","tag-home-owner","tag-housing","tag-housing-crisis","tag-margaret-river","tag-median-house-price","tag-million-dollar-club","tag-real-estate","tag-regional-housing","tag-south-west-real-estate","tag-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}