A new report has identified the best places for families to buy property in Australia, with a detailed suburb-by-suburb breakdown based on key criteria designed around the needs of families.
Well Home Loans’ research characterised a ‘family suburb’ based on a range of aspects ranging from prices to schools to proximity to other families.
They crunched the data and found that Horningsea Park, in Sydney’s Southwest, was the best option, with other nearby areas such as Blair Athol and Glenmore Park also rating highly.
Beyond Sydney, Marlow Lagoon in the Northern Territory, New Lambton Heights in Newcastle and Dingley Village near Dandenong came out among the best options for those with families.
“The way that we’ve classified a ‘family suburb’ is via the median sale price, which has to be affordable, so we looked for around $200,000 to $1.5m,” said Well Home Loans CEO Scott Spencer.
“The next classification was where you have owner occupiers making up at least 70% of the local population, which takes out the rental market.”
“Then you get free standing houses, which has to make up 60% of the local area, and then the family households, which is a household with at least 2.5 people, which also has to be 60% of the local area.”
“The last component of it is the SEIFA education score, which is derived from ABS data. That’s how we came up with the ‘family suburb’.”
“It all comes down to the algorithm: once you get past the median sales price, which can be a little all over the place, you get to the census data on neighbourhoods.”
Research reveals best places for families to buy property in Australia
According to Spencer, the pandemic has drastically changed the best places for families to get onto the property ladder, with locations further away from CBD areas now more possible for working parents.
“Covid has changed a lot of things in terms of what people are looking for, as you can work remotely a lot these days,’ he said.
“What is also happening is the transformation involved when you get close to the city: I know here in Victoria, if you are 10-15km away from the city, you might have once had some land, but in recent years, those parcels have now been cut up and had smaller homes put on them.”
“If you’re looking for a larger place with a back yard, you really have to look further out now.”
