People moving into the Altona Primary School zone are helping to drive house prices up by about $120,000, new Real Estate Institute of Victoria data shows.
Homes within the zone had a median price of $945,000 in the year to June 30, compared with a median of $825,000 outside the catchment.
REIV president Joseph Walton said the data showed growing demand for homes near some of Melbourne’s best primary schools.
“While homes zoned for some of the city’s best public secondary schools have experienced significant price growth for a number of years, we’re now seeing this trend reflected in primary school catchment areas,” he said.
Greg Hocking Elly Partners director Wayne Elly said it was a trend being witnessed in several suburbs.
“In the west, especially, we’re seeing that across the board … also in Williamstown and Yarraville,” he said. “There’s a lot more new families moving into the area now and they’re worried about getting their kids into the public schools. Ten years ago it wasn’t really a big issue, but all of a sudden the areas are [experiencing] re-gentrification … and people are specifically buying within specific school zones in certain suburbs – and Williamstown, Altona and Yarraville are definitely seeing that.”
Altona Primary School principal Kevin Enright said people were definitely moving to be within the zone so their children could be automatically enrolled.
“We actually get people from overseas who find the school on the internet and move over into the area,” he said. “I know people that are coming here and want to go to the school … they look at the zone and say, well, we need to go and find somewhere to buy.”
