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The Badgerys Creek airport will soon be here. We look at what it will mean for property investors.
It’s been one of the longest, most anticipated projects ever. Even the Sydney Opera House only took twenty years from design to completion.
Finally, the Badgerys Creek airport is coming. First floated in 1946 it has taken this long for it to get a green light. However, all signs are that this will be more than just a transport hub into the area, but a massive cultural, economic and infrastructure transformation.
The Badgerys Creek airport won’t simply be a large runway and a terminal smacked down in the middle of the countryside. There are plans for it to be an “aerotropolis” – that is a city based around an airport. It will be called the Greater West City. Just like a proper city it will include: universities, convention centres, hotels, industrial and business parks and even sporting stadiums. A north and south mini city (built on either side of the airport) will hold 250,000 people by 2050. Great care and planning is also going into creating green zones; cultural hubs and community flash points. In other words, this has the potential to be a sophisticated planned city with the airport as the centerpiece. It’s a city projected to be twice the size of Macquarie Park by 2050. It could well be the third big city after Sydney CBD and Parramatta.
Already there’s been an instantaneous flow on effect to property values in the region. As was noted back in July, some houses near the planned airport have seen gigantic leaps. The biggest winner has been Bringelly, where houses have gone from a median of $935,000 to $2.4 million. Other suburbs around Badgerys Creek like Rossmore and Luddenham have seen their property prices soar as well and many investors have been leaping in. Chinese investors have also been snapping up large land blocks, one even paying $9.4 million in April 2017 for a retail strip in South Windsor, 24 kms from Badgerys Creek.
And it’s not just the immediate area. There has been large jumps in property prices in the semi-rural areas of Wallacia, Campbelltown, Ingleburn and Liverpool. The impact of the airport is also expected to be felt further afield – the Southern Highlands also predicted to increase in price. And the big neighbouring cities, such as Liverpool, Campbelltown and even Penrith will become highly sought after as thousands of workers move into the area to build the airport. Indeed a Deloitte Access Economics report found that a western Sydney airport would create between 12,645 and 19,982 jobs for the region and up to 31,736 jobs for greater Sydney between 2020 and 2050. It also found that there would be an impact on the Western Sydney economy of between $9.2 billion and $15.6 billion in that same period.
The biggest winner has been Bringelly, where houses have gone from a median of $935,000 to $2.4 million.
The clear winners are the Badgerys Creek area and surrounding corridors and towns. Parts of the Southern Highlands (only 30 minutes from the new airport) will jump up, as will the outskirts of Liverpool and Campbelltwon. Property in the south-west corridors are excellent investment opportunities. They are still affordable and will only keep going up. For example: Spring Farm is excellent. Another is Thirlmere right on the edge of south-west Sydney up against the State Forest. It sits on the corridor between Campbelltown and Wollongong. Thirlmere’s average house price is $653k and investors have enjoyed rental yields of 4.8% over the last 10 years.
The losers may be areas like Greendale and Silverdale both in Camden, which an environmental report shows will take on a lot of the high noise as planes circle overhead. This will likely result in property price drops. There may also be property drops in parts of the lower Blue Mountains which will also be part of the flight path. Residents in the Blue Mountains have been campaigning hard against any fly-overs, though the planned flight paths are supposed to be 10 000 feet above.
The sheer scale of development in Badgerys Creek is unlike anything NSW has witnessed for a long time. It has the potential to be a veritable gold mine for property investors. But, as with all things, careful research and meticulous strategy is required.
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