We reserve homes for over 55s. Why don’t we have villages for first home buyers?

PHOTO: First-home buyers often find themselves at auctions competing with cashed-up downsizers and investors. But what if they didn’t have to? CREDIT: PETER RAE

“Are you here for your parents or for someone else?” the selling agent asked the weary first home buyer couple inspecting their umpteenth home in Sydney one Saturday morning.

They were hopeful. It could finally have been the one. The perfect place that ticked all the boxes – a well-maintained, two-bedroom starter home within their budget and close to their jobs.

“No, we’re inspecting it for ourselves,” the couple replied, suddenly realising the handful of other interested buyers were much older than them.

“Oh, this is for over 55s only.”

Selling Sunset star in Sydney | WATCH

There are retirement villages everywhere. Homes reserved for retirees. Why don’t we have the same for first home buyers, where they could have first dibs on affordable property without having to compete with investors and cashed-up downsizers?

It could be done a number of ways, experts say, if there was political will and developers had an incentive to deliver.

University of Sydney professor of urban and regional planning Nicole Gurran said the most obvious way to ensure first home buyers could buy into the market was for governments to enshrine it in legislation by requiring that a proportion of new homes be earmarked for them.

“Of course we could [have first-home buyer villages]. That’s inclusionary zoning and that’s the method used in South Australia and many countries around the world,” Gurran said.

“That means you have to sell those homes at a particular price point that we have defined as affordable that’s based on a deposit and repayments of moderate income earners. It’s not too dissimilar to the approach in retirement housing.

AREC 2022 edges closer with ‘star-studded’ line-up

“The benefit is that the first home buyer isn’t priced out immediately by an investor who is able to outbid them.”

Gurran said while it took some time to embed in South Australia (starting in 2005 with a 15 per cent target), there is now a pipeline of affordable housing in the state. According to a 2018 report by Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, the program delivered 5485 affordable homes before 2015, amounting to 17 per cent of total housing supply in that state.

In NSW, the state government has given the City of Sydney the green light to commit to inclusionary zoning only to deliver rental housing, despite attempts to boost affordable housing by other councils, including the Northern Beaches and Ryde. Very few Sydney councils have been able to implement the idea because of barriers in state government planning legislation, Gurran said.

She said another way to develop first home villages was through community land trusts. This is a form of shared property ownership in which the land component of a residential property is owned by a community-based not-for-profit legal entity and the building is owned (or leased long-term) by an individual household.

adsense