Affordable Housing

So apparently the time has passed. I understood that buying property in West Preston would be cheap now and an excellent investment for the future, but a colleague told me at work yesterday that she thought it was already getting expensive. So where does that leave me, if I ever do feel like buying something? Oakhill in Reservoir is apparently affordable, and in these things it doesn't pay to be a snob. In fact, snobbery costs quite a bit of money.

I love the Northern suburbs. I feel like there's a truer cross-section of society here, and community that isn't dependent on having a tennis court and swimming pool for entertaining. And yet it hardly seems worth the price that you would pay currently to live here. My rent is very cheap, I know, but that has less to do with the suburb I live in and more to do with my landlords being the parents of my two housemates. Much as I like Preston, I can't help feeling that, if prices are too high already, the market is clearly growing more rapidly than the suburb. There are very few services in West Preston, aside from the Regent Village shops (not half as quaint or charming as the name implies; there's a Post Office/Newsagent that's mostly used to buy Tattslotto tickets, a Pharmacist, and a few takeaway places) and the Foodworks that just opened down the road. If this suburb is too expensive for me, where would I have to live to get something affordable?

It's all academic, really. Nothing is affordable for me right now, and I'm very happy renting. It's just a bit of a shock to realise that even my humble and moderately dirty suburb is becoming "gentrified" in terms of prices. It's mostly a shock because there's little evidence of this gentrification when you walk down the street. What I see is a humble, quiet, multicultural streetscape, with a reasonable amount of rubbish lying around - and I guess people are willing to pay good money for that, if it means living twenty minutes from the city.