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Whats driving the demand for Melbourne townhouse development?

By January 10, 2017October 24th, 2023No Comments

A townhouse combines the powerful element of outdoor space and garden so lacking in apartment life, with an easy to manage aspect, being simpler to maintain than a full size house and garden allotment.

It’s a great formula for down-sizers, young families, or people who simply find the economics are a good match for their current life plans. With a townhouse you also get an individual title, your own garage, usually a garden path to the front door, plus there’s often a street frontage.

The surge in demand for medium-density dwellings during the last 4 years has produced a near all-time national high of 33,183 new terrace, row or semi-detached home approvals over the 12 months to Oct. 2016.

This is growth of nearly 7% for townhouse approvals above the previous twelve month period, and a whopping 92% increase on the 17,287 new semi-detached, row or terrace house approvals in the 12 months up to July 2012, before the trend started to really move.

Developers are choosing townhouse developments over apartments to match the growing demand. As well as the lifestyle choices Melbourne residents are making that favour townhouses the city also has to house 100,000 new arrivals every year. All the new arrivals aspire to the Melbourne lifestyle, which includes some open blue sky and garden space at home.
Townhouse developments are a safer choice for developers who have to consider the adverse effects new foreign investment tax rules, planning legislation and concerns about over-supply are having on apartment development prospects.

With current levels of demand, which is growing, the townhouse developer point of view is that although the revenue from a townhouse development may be less, the time and costs of developing them is less as well, which means easier financing. Developers are finding average projects are selling out within 2 or 3 months.
Popularity is consistent across diverse locations and price ranges with recent developments selling quickly. The Highbury, a 49 home development in the $650,000 range in Footscray sold one every day. The Ballantyne, in Glen Iris with 22 homes in the 1.3M range sold out in ten weeks and a 46 luxe residence development ‘308 Carlisle’ in East St. Kilda in the 3M range also sold out after only 10 weeks.

The townhouse is back in Melbourne and in a big way.