Geelong suburbs with the biggest housing projects revealed

Social and affordable housing developments and estates devoted to people downsizing or retiring are among the biggest projects feeding Geelong’s new dwelling pipeline.

But supply pressures remain a threat to affordability as new data reveals the city’s over-reliance on new land estates.

New analysis reveals the 10 Geelong suburbs with the most housing projects where construction is underway or likely to start in 2024.

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The research revealed more than 1000 planned dwellings in pipeline in these suburbs alone, with central Geelong the epicentre of the growth with 340 apartments and townhouses.

Two main projects in central Geelong are multistorey developments, including the seven-storey Motif apartments project at 1 York St where developer DM Property has amended plans to increase the number of apartments, including affordable housing stock.

Melbourne-based Pitard Group is developing an 11-storey complex at 23-25 Myers St in partnership with Homes Victoria to create 117 one and two-bedroom apartments designed for affordable and social housing.

Construction work has begun on both sites.

Other major projects in the pipeline where construction is expected to begin later includes the mixed use Cunningham Place project from Amber Property Group on Corio St, which will deliver 71 apartments along with a hotel, retail, commercial and conference facilities, and a 58-apartment mixed use development by Monno at 61-71 Moorabool St.

Major projects around Geelong includes the luxury Stella Maris apartment and townhouse development at Rippleside and the Halcyon Horizon over 50s land lease community at Armstrong Creek.

The planned supply pipeline includes apartment, townhouse and land lease dwellings that will be ready to sell in the next 12 months, but doesn’t take into account traditional home sites in areas like Armstrong Creek.

Other suburbs delivering dwellings through projects include Armstrong Creek (281 dwellings), Corio (107), Lara (93), Portarlington (66), Rippleside (58), Highton (61), Norlane (39), Curlewis (24) and Newtown (20).

But PRD chief economist Dr Diaswati Mardiasmo said the data revealed it’s not enough for Geelong to tackle housing affordability in the long term.

“We still have quite a few areas that have a median price that is lower than the Greater Geelong LGA, which is $720,000, like Armstrong Creek, Corio, Norlane and Curlewis,” Dr Mardiasmo said.

“This level of supply will definitely help, and now is the time to get in because even though there is this supply, it’s still an under-supply.

“The challenge we have with regional areas is that there wasn’t a lot of the ready-to-sell units and townhouses. There were hundreds of land lots being created, but then when you talk about land lots, we might not see anything coming out of the soil until 2027,” Dr Mardiasmo said.

“A place like Corio, for example, has a $481,000 median price right now, there were 252 sales in the past 12 months – and that’s for houses.

“There’s only 34 townhouses and 73 units, so that’s just 100 or so new stock coming in. Even though these prices are affordable right now, the chances of the continuing to be affordable is low.”

Dr Mardiasmo said land-lease projects designed for over-50s played a role in supply as they freed up other properties for the general market.

Residential property transactions remained steady in Geelong over the past two financial years following a big jump at the height of the Covid pandemic.

PEXA figures show the median price for the almost 9200 residential property transactions in FY24 fell slightly to $630,000, chief economist Julie Toth said.

“It’s really good news, given what happened during that two years when we had that record, rapid rise in interest rates and the market did hold firm.

“Given that interest rates look like they’ll stay flat for quite a while now, we would expect to see a better stability and holding that in the market.”

But Ms Toth said the region’s reliance on new homes in greenfields suburbs such as Armstrong Creek, which accounted for a quarter of sales, posed a risk to affordability.

“If things don’t speed up again or we continue to see significant delays in building time and people waiting for a new home, that’s going to be an issue.

“It puts more pressure on the existing housing stock because you’re going to get a portion of people who get impatient and don’t want to wait for a new home.”

The 3216 postcode including Belmont and Highton accounted for 13 per cent of transactions, with Lara at 8.5 per cent and the 3215 postcode including Bell Park, Hamlyn Heights, North Geelong and Rippleside accounting 487 sales.