Essendon Leads Melbourne’s Market Recovery
Essendon has long been the most aspirational suburb of the inner North of Melbourne. It’s wide tree-lined streets and excellent shopping strips of Essendon Village and Puckle Street Moonee Ponds are a great attraction for young families as are the vast array of top quality public and private schools in the area.
Essendon offers outstanding accessibility to Melbourne CBD offering an efficient commute by car averaging only 23 minutes in peak hour vs other suburbs which are a similar proximity to the city, for example, Hawthorn which is 29 minutes and Brighton which has crept out to 32 minutes.
The many beautiful period homes within the area fetch the prices of Melbourne’s most elite suburbs with strong sales results in the $4m – $10m price range, this alone has a positive impact on property prices improving the value of the surrounding properties.
Essendon has always performed very well from a capital growth perspective, drawing buyers from all over the local area to live in the ‘Toorak of the North’, but it is based on its affordability relative to other premium suburbs of Melbourne that Essendon is also drawing strong migration from the inner east, such as the city of Boroondara (Hawthorn, Camberwell, Kew) which has really driven price growth in recent years.
Branson Group Director Ben Atanasovski is a born and bred local and has been developing in Essendon for 15 years. He is of the belief that the stars are aligning again for the Essendon property market with Essendon again offering all of the hallmarks of a suburb on the move.
Some of the key indicators Ben is looking for when picking boom suburbs are as follows –
A Change in Demographics
Essendon has always been a well-healed suburb with the schools attracting the wealthy from all over the area. But 5 years ago, Essendon lacked the lifestyle of many of the other hip suburbs in middle ring Melbourne, like Brunswick, Fitzroy, or Prahran. And because of this, kids would grow up and move out of Essendon.
Now with the addition of a vast array of lifestyle attractions such as cafes, bars restaurants as well as expanding shopping options, the opposite is now occurring with an influx of young people moving to town.
This influx in younger people is expected to continue to drive demand in the property market, particularly in the apartment and townhouse market as these first and second time buyers look to gain a foothold in the market.
Employment
Essendon Fields is about to see a new $100m commercial precinct which is being undertaken in a joint venture between Lindsay Fox and property developer Max Beck, which is expected to be home to 14,000 jobs upon completion.
This combined with the Melbourne airport which employs over 14,000 people when functioning at full capacity, plus strong local business in the region is set to continue to drive the local economy and underpin demand for property within the area.
Supply and Demand Imbalance
While there are a range of factors that influence the property market, supply and demand is the number one driver behind the performance of any market. When there are lots of people buying, and a limited supply of homes available people compete for property driving price growth.
A key driver behind supply and demand is population growth (increasing demand) and the number of new homes being built in the area (supply)…
The Essendon market has been moving into a state of undersupply fuelled by strong population growth with the population expected to grow by 41.04% over the next two decades to 2041.
The supply of new dwellings has reduced drastically with townplanning approvals in the City of Moonee Valley falling significantly in recent years.
It is this imbalance that expected to continue to drive price growth within the market.
The Feel of the Suburb
While the feel of a suburb is a lot less scientific than other indicators, it could be the most important.
The café where people queue up for breakfast on a Saturday, the organic grocer (Lamanna) that is the only place to go when preparing a meal for friends or family, a thriving shopping village or beautiful tree-lined streets with every second property under renovation – these are the things that add up to a suburb on the rise!
Based on strong fundamentals, Branson Group have been buying up land in Essendon with the view of delivering a spectacular range of new homes in the area. Stay tuned for more information as it comes to hand.
