At first glance it seems to be a wonderful idea. It is proposed that a purpose built complex at Greenacre, near Bankstown in Sydney be only available to first home buyers. Intended buyers will be required to sign a statutory declaration before a JP that they have never had previous home ownership, making a false declaration a criminal offence.
This complex will comprise forty-seven apartments and town houses and there will be an offering price limit of $ 650,000 for apartments and $ 789,000 for town houses. This will take them well under the median price offering on housing stock in this city.
Not only is housing in Sydney grossly over priced, it is also shrinking in volume availability. The industry estimates that currently there are 19,000 homes in the hands of agents offering them for sale, and this is down from 27,000 at the same time last year.
Some psychologists will have misgivings about this plan. There is a very real chance that it will concentrate people of a similar age group and a similar financial status in a grouping. If so, then there will be a tendency for children of a similar age to add to that concentration, bringing together a uniformity that signals danger.
It is one of life's peculiarities that harmony is best achieved when groupings consist of a balance of young and old, with a mix of financial status and a wide variety of differing interests in sport, politics and religion. Basically, that is the usual situation in most Australian suburbs and it is something that the Housing Commission has been careful to try and achieve in their allocation of public housing. The plan of creating a whole suburb of welfare housing has been abandoned in favour of a mix of public and private housing to break that uniformity mould.
Fortunately, there is no plan to require buyers to hold ownership for a given period of time and the ever rising price structure in Sydney will probably quickly dilute this concentration mix. It will be tempting to take a quick profit and move on to a bigger or better property with the added equity from that profit improving the buyers asset base.
Sydney and Melbourne have long suffered what some would call the " Ghetto " situation. As the migrant mix moves from country to country, there is a tendency for new arrivals to seek the security of living close to others from that same country and usually one suburb quickly becomes known for a concentration of that nationality. So it was after the end of the second world war when many abandoned a war weary Europe for sunny Australia. We quickly developed Italian, Greek and other European themed suburbs - and later a similar phenomenon happened at the end of the Vietnam war.
It will be interesting to see how this development at Greenacre turns out and whether it becomes a trend duplicated across the city. The other danger is that the standard of housing is designed to fit in with first home buyers budgets and falls short of the level of expectation that now exists. Planning authorities would be advised to check carefully to see that size ratios are maintained and that fittings levels meet requirements. We would not want to see first home buyer accommodation built to a price - rather than to a standard.
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