Canberra most affordable?

Or Macgregor West even!!

http://maps.google.com.au/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=macgregor+act&sll=-25.335448,135.745076&sspn=59.339154,79.101563&ie=UTF8&ll=-35.208565,149.004264&spn=0.027175,0.038624&t=h&z=15

Magregor West is near the Belconnen Golf Course. It’s going to go from Parkwood Rd, where the houses are now, all the way up to Ginninderra Ck near Dunlop.

The original Macgregor is bad enough.. add more low income housing in the same area, and we know what the end result will be. The government has done pretty much nothing for “affordable housing” particularly in the new gungahlin suburbs, where the average house price would probabably be over $450k still.

2604 said :

JimT said :

So why all the negativity?

In a word, ignorance.

Half of the ppl posting here think that a 50-year old, original condition ex-govvie in the Inner North is a complete bargain at $450-500,000.

You got yourself a brand new place, in a location that suits you, for less than that. My advice is to ignore the negative comments above and enjoy your new home.

agreed, but as i mentioned earlier, where is the new suburb of west macgregor? evan at the old belconnen golf course, when the breeze was just wrong, you could smell the treatment works….

I thought that it might have been the new flats and houses that were built near the golf course. as no-one has provided me prior to my post as to where it was, I was labouring under an assumption.

and 450-500k is waay out of my reach. I will settle for an outer suburbs house….

JimT said :

So why all the negativity?

In a word, ignorance.

Half of the ppl posting here think that a 50-year old, original condition ex-govvie in the Inner North is a complete bargain at $450-500,000.

You got yourself a brand new place, in a location that suits you, for less than that. My advice is to ignore the negative comments above and enjoy your new home.

The affordability metric is, I believed, based on average income. This allows the raw prices to be higher but Canberra to be ‘affordable’ because the average wage is higher than (I’m guessing here) every other jurisdiction, where there is a far wider geographic and social range to take into account when determining that average.

As caf said, stamp duty concessions are hard to qualify for here. A few weeks of acting last year put us just over the threshold by a couple of thousand, so instead of paying $500 we ended up paying $11,000, as there is no tapering to the concession.

ant said :

To get affordable housing, they need to stop sellign blocks to developers who then cram the biggest, silliest house they can on it to scam megabucks off cashed-up families.

LOL, instead they should sell blocks to cashed-up families, so they can cram the biggest silliest house they can, with their megabucks 😉

peterh said :

hah! i remember when it was all paddocks, and the fassifern farm road was a great treaddly track.

dunlop was where we charny kids used to play. now a new suburb. always thought it would be a golf course….

west macgregor would get the molonglo treatment odors, surely?

Not likley. The treatment works are miles away down a valley. The tip maybe, but having lived in Dunlop myself, in sight of this new development I can tell you I never once smelt tip odours.

Canberra housing fails on most measures of affordability, so the government has done something clever to make this the most affordable (either clever calculations so it looks affordable, or clever regulations). And I wonder if the affordability will last?

As for Canberra being “overpriced” – the price is what people will pay for it. Price is not regulated (for good reason), so it is as simple as supply and demand. And since Canberra has high average income, and supply that is best characterised as a trickle, prices are high by comparison to other cities. There are probably other reasons too (e.g. population growth relative to housing supply, decreasing number of people per household and so on). This is why apartments are popping up like mushrooms.

Queanbeyan also has the advantage of no stamp duty for first home buyers (the ACT has stamp duty concessions, but they’re much harder to qualify for than the NSW ones).

On the odd occasion that I bother to check local real estate prices, the only listings that fall within the range that a bank will lend me are in Queanbeyan.

I dunno about WM being an awful place to live. It’ll be the same as any other new suburb: a little bare and seemingly soulless (in comparison to the surrounding, more established suburbs), but growing into itself.

Scullin used to be the ends of the earth and no-one wanted to live there. All of Tuggeranong and surrounds used to be the same. West Macgregor is no different.

West MacGregor is between the orginal MacGregor and Parwood. It’s very close (maybe even under) the high voltage power lines which feed the nearby substation. I believe the Belconnen tip is now for recycling and green waste only, but any residual smells from there will be completely overpowered by the adjacent Parkwood battery egg farm.

It will probably be an awful place to live, but it will get people out of Govt housing (or off the street) and into the property market.

Gumby said :

Canberra has some of the most overpriced property in Australia. West MacGregor will get the worst smell coming from the tip when the wind picks up esp. In west macgregor and ginninderra ponds in dunlop, the blocks are tiny, backyards are non-existent as builders try and fit as much house as possible on small blocks. developers and builders buy several blocks and build identical houses next door to each other. With cheap fittings and huge price tags. The only cheap housing is one of the new two bedroom places they are building in Forde….outrageous.

Do you mean the tip that closed in 2001? (is now recylcling only)
I’m curious – Have any of you actually bothered to take a look out here, or are you making armchair assumptions?
I have lived in west macgregor since October last year and the only problem I have has is dust when the wind picks up. No smells from the ex-tip, or the treatment plant (take a look at google maps. The tip is km’s away)
I grew up in Holt and my folks live just around the corner so I like the location and I wasn’t interested in living in an apartment.
On block size – Did you ever consider that perhaps the people that bought there don’t want big blocks? I bought a 3bdrm place – 116m2, which is plenty big enough for me and my girlfriend. Courtyard is about 80m2. Far more usable space than I will ever need living here.

I don’t get the “slum” reference either. It’s affordable housing. Not government housing. I think you’ll find more junkies and welfare recipients living in and around Braddon than here.

So why all the negativity?

Jim Jones said :

I used to live in Dunlop, and really liked some aspects of it. I’d go for a run in the mornings and see the sun rising against a backdrop of grazing kangaroos and some cattle, unbroken land stretching out to the mountains – very nice indeed. Although, one night I was woken by a bull that had got loose and was lowing up and down Ginninderra Drive.

hah! i remember when it was all paddocks, and the fassifern farm road was a great treaddly track.

dunlop was where we charny kids used to play. now a new suburb. always thought it would be a golf course….

west macgregor would get the molonglo treatment odors, surely?

With all the fungal apartment growths popping up everywhere it is surprising anyone needs accommodation in Canberra. I swear I go down a street one week and it looks completely different the next with a sprouting apartment where their used to be something else.

Canberra has some of the most overpriced property in Australia. West MacGregor will get the worst smell coming from the tip when the wind picks up esp. In west macgregor and ginninderra ponds in dunlop, the blocks are tiny, backyards are non-existent as builders try and fit as much house as possible on small blocks. developers and builders buy several blocks and build identical houses next door to each other. With cheap fittings and huge price tags. The only cheap housing is one of the new two bedroom places they are building in Forde….outrageous.

I used to live in Dunlop, and really liked some aspects of it. I’d go for a run in the mornings and see the sun rising against a backdrop of grazing kangaroos and some cattle, unbroken land stretching out to the mountains – very nice indeed. Although, one night I was woken by a bull that had got loose and was lowing up and down Ginninderra Drive.

Have you guys been to dunlop? It’s all fringe.

peterh said :

where is the west macgregor site anyway? not heard of that one…

Go to MacGregor and turn west…

But seriously… Anyone looking at realestate in the Canberra region will tell you that it is considerably less affordable than most other capitals. We don’t have the suburban fringe development and the higher density inner city development of other major cities.

ant said :

To get affordable housing, they need to stop sellign blocks to developers who then cram the biggest, silliest house they can on it to scam megabucks off cashed-up families.

not to mention that they have no backyards…. where is the west macgregor site anyway? not heard of that one…

To get affordable housing, they need to stop sellign blocks to developers who then cram the biggest, silliest house they can on it to scam megabucks off cashed-up families.

Well what do people expect for the cheapest part of Canberra? A beautiful luxury apartment with water views? One of the main problems Canberra has is that we don’t seem to be developing on the edges of suburbia, where land can (should) be made available more cheaply, leading to genuinely more affordable housing.

…yay?