Liverpool Chamber Issue 1 September 2014 - page 10

Article from SMH
Antony Lawes September 14, 2014
The first planes may not be touching
down for at least a decade but
land near the proposed airport at
Badgerys Creek is fast becoming hot
property.
From Blacktown in the north
to Campbelltown in the south,
small investors through to large
developers are scrambling to get a
hold in an area that experts think
has staggering potential.
And this is before much of the
land around the airport has been
rezoned, or has services such as
sewerage and water connected.
“It was virtually overnight,” said
Michael Cavagnino, licensee of LJ
Hooker Leppington, of when interest
in these areas started to take off,
following the announcement of the
airport in April.
The property market in Sydney’s
south-west, like much of the city,
had been riding high since last
year. But agents say the airport
announcement charged already
popular areas such as Liverpool,
and opened up interest in new
swathes of rural and semi-rural
land for residential and commercial
development.
Local agent Joe Romeo, licensee of
Country Lane Properties at Horsley
Park, close to Badgerys Creek,
estimated that in February and
March he had one or two buyers for
these rural properties. Now there
are about about 100. “We’ve had a
lot of people wanting to buy since
the airport announcement,” he said,
adding that most of them were
looking at this land for commercial
use.
Doug Driscoll, chief executive of
Starr Partners, with a network of
more than 20 agencies in western
and south-western Sydney,
estimated that interest had surged
by 40 per cent, and there weren’t
enough properties for sale to satisfy
demand.
“I would anticipate upward pressure
on prices based on this investor
demand,” he said.
AndrewWilson, senior economist of
the Fairfax Media-owned Domain
Group, said demand for residential
and commercial land around the
proposed airport was about to
go through “a revolution, not an
evolution”.
Over the past three months, the
NSW government has announced
the rezoning of land for more than
8000 homes in western Sydney
and increased the area set aside for
industrial and commercial use.
A spokeswoman for the NSW
Department of Planning and
Environment said further planning
was being done to “maximise the
opportunities around the second
airport”.
“It is smart to start planning for a
growing western Sydney today by
setting aside land for housing now,”
she said.
Yet evenbeforemuchof this rezoning
has been done, there are already “big
deals” being negotiated between
landowners and developers.
Ray White Projects director Peter
Walsh said these ranged frommulti-
unit developments close to the
bigger centres, to housing projects
further out, but many of them were
in the early stages of negotiation.
“People are definitely seeing [the
airport] as a stimulus to that [local]
economy, there’s no doubt about it,”
he said.
The western Sydney director of the
Sydney Business Chamber, David
Borger, has been a strong advocate
of the airport’s ability to boost jobs
and stimulate economic growth in
a region where more than 200,000
people have to leave every day for
work in other parts of the city.
He said while little was known
about the details of the new airport,
the fact that “there’s going to be
employment, road improvements
andbuseswill allowmore residential
development in the south-west
growth centre”.
New airport a magnet for buyers