Young Aussie tradie calls out bleak new housing trend: 'We're seeing it a lot more'

Yahoo

6 days ago

It's becoming increasingly difficult for Australians to get on the property ladder as limited space in cities pushes costs higher and urban sprawl further out. The growing problem is prompting a sad property trend, and tradie Judd Johnston told Yahoo News he stares the reality square in the face every day.
The Australian dream of expansive backyards with clothes lines and cubby houses is long gone, the Melbourne-based carpenter said. Now, the majority of Australians can only look forward to owning new homes that literally touch their neighbour's.
"We're seeing it a lot more compared to back in the day," Judd said. "Once the house is actually finished in terms of the frame, there's only enough room for brick and whatever material is going on the outside... By the time that's finished, I've seen a lot of them literally touching."
Footage captured by Judd shows several examples of homes under construction that are centimetres away from the neighbouring property. He questioned why Australians are now being challenged more than ever before to own a home, only for the size and features of the property to be less than before.
How close a house can be built to the boundary line is determined by local council and state zoning regulations, but in many regions, the garages at least can be built right up to the boundary, or the whole house if a zero-lot home development is approved.
Aussies paying 'more and more' for 'smaller and smaller' homes
Cities across the country are seeing a significant rise in the number of 'micro-lots' sprouting up in their outskirts, with developers hoping to make the most out of the land they acquire.
Edwin Almeida has been running a property consultancy business in Sydney for decades and told Yahoo News recently that the standard block of land for a home has shrunk.
"We went from your standard 750 square metre block of land to 520, then we went down to 360 square metres and then right down to 240," he told Yahoo. "In my day, a 240 square metre block of land, that's what you got with a townhouse, not a free-standing house."
He recently spotted the trend of homes being close together in Bargo, a suburb on the fringes of Sydney, claiming the homes under construction there were so close "you can shake hands with your next-door neighbour when you go to the sh**ter".
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Judd echoed this sentiment, claiming profit reigns supreme rather than any other factor — even though Australian houses, as we know them, are shifting dramatically.
"Housing is being maximised for profit... we're just paying more and more for a house that's essentially just getting smaller and smaller," he said.
Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics also indicates the shrinking of block sizes, with the average size reducing by nearly a hundred square metres in the last decade.
Yahoo News has reported on many incidents showing how this demand for limited space is reshaping Australian suburbs, like a resident in Sydney's Tallawong who pointed out so-called half-width streets in a developing suburb, with roads visibly narrower in comparison to what we're used to. Last year, a developer pushed plans for a six-storey apartment building to be built on a block of land the same width of a parking bay in the Sydney's inner west.
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