Claremont apartment boom amid housing approval slump - Newsgrio

Claremont apartment boom amid housing approval slump" title="Claremont apartment boom amid housing approval slump" />

August 15 22:03 2017 by Scott Menard Print This Article

Posted August 16, 2017 08:03:18

Photo: Apartment approvals in Claremont are higher than anywhere else in Australia. (ABC News: Andrew O’Connor)

The upmarket Perth suburbs of Cottesloe and Claremont are the fastest-growing in Australia for apartment approvals, new figures show.

But the end of the mining boom proved calamitous for housing approvals in Western Australia, which slumped to the lowest level of any Australian mainland state.

The figures, contained in BankWest’s annual housing density report, blamed a fall in the state’s population growth rate for the housing downturn.

The report showed 43.1 per cent more apartments were approved in the Cottesloe-Claremont area in the 12 months to March 2017 compared with the previous 12-month period.

BankWest chief economist Alan Langford said there had been a lot of apartment developments in Cottesloe and Claremont, as well as the southern Perth suburb of Melville, which ranked third in the nation for apartment approvals.

He said the spike was likely driven by empty nesters.

“I guess to some extent it’s people who are downsizing and they want to stay in the same area,” he said.

Mr Langford said substantial redevelopment around Claremont Oval had been a contributing factor.

“I think a lot of people are attracted to multi-residential medium density if you like, rather than the old quarter-acre block,” he said.

Population growth fall stunts housing

Photo: The median house price in Perth is half that in Sydney. (ABC News)

On the flipside, the report found approvals for medium-density homes were down more than 27 per cent, while low density approvals fell by 23 per cent.

Mr Langford said WA’s population growth had reduced to less than one per cent, compared to more than three per cent during the mining boom, and this was contributing to the drop in housing approvals.

However, he said there was an upside for buyers — the median house price in Perth is now half what it is in Sydney.

“That’s got to be a bit of an attraction for people to move from Sydney at least, but they still need to have the jobs here — the high paying jobs,” Mr Langford said.

Topics: housing-industry, housing, urban-development-and-planning, perth-6000