A new study has revealed the Illawarra’s top places to live for families.
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The report released by Aussie Home Loans, Most Popular Suburbs for Families, identified the Top 20 suburbs in the Illawarra region.
Commissioned by Aussie but compiled by CoreLogic, the report used a blend of 2016 Census data together with housing market statistics to highlight the suburbs most popular with families, and the typical costs to purchase a home in these areas.
The report’s Illawarra list covers suburbs within the region, including those broken down into the statistical/geographical areas of Kiama-Shellharbour, Dapto-Port Kembla, Wollongong and the Illawarra Catchment Reserve.
Topping the Illawarra region list is Wilton, located within the Illawarra Catchment Reserve.
It has a median house value of $792,218 (as of December 2017), an average land area (the typical block size for detached houses, based on properties that have sold over the past 12 months) of 1061sqm and 52 total sales of houses/units during 2017.
In second place is Shell Cove, with a median house value of $939,839, an average land area of 473sqm and 87 sales during the same period.
Cordeaux Heights, Helensburgh and Horsley round out the top five in the report’s Illawarra list.
Only those suburbs with at least 480 households have been included.
The report suggested the “most popular family locations tend to be located across the middle ring and outer ring suburbs” of major cities.
It also suggested suburbs in those areas “show more affordable housing prices” and “the houses are often perched on larger blocks of land and there is a clear bias towards houses rather than units”.
“Once you start getting outside the capital cities, generally the biggest concentrations of families tend to be in what you might describe as the satellite cities,” Tim Lawless, CoreLogic’s head of research said.
“The areas adjacent to the major capitals, that also offer up a really diverse economic array of industries... I think the Illawarra would be a great example of that.”
The report also outlines the lower quartile and upper quartile house and unit values for the suburbs.
The lower quartile provides an indication of the entry level value for housing in the suburb, and the upper quartile the higher end values.
For example, in Shell Cove the lower quartile house value is $869,215, while the upper quartile house value is $1,029,021.
