Boom times in Narromine are causing the same rental and house purchase shortages seen elsewhere, with Council doing its best to open up new developments in the Shire.
With innovative solutions, including recent sale of dozens of lots at the historic airport and plans to effectively flood-proof the town, the future is looking bright for the Shire west of Dubbo.
Local realtor, Roz Reynolds, is herself a recent tree-changer from the big smoke, and like many others, is now enjoying the best that country life has to offer.
The principal of the local LJ Hooker says, however, that getting a place to lay your head is no walk in the park; though a little better than the post-COVID feeding frenzy.
“The sales market and the rental market are both strong with low vacancies; they’re both very tight, though it has stabilised a little bit,” she said.
“There’s very little available compared to two or three years ago, but we’ve now got some more properties on the market, but it’s still very strong” she added.
Like many Sydney-siders, she began to look bush during the COVID lockdowns, that impacted the lives of people in larger metropolitan areas disproportionately.
“It’s a lovely town, I moved here at the end of 2020, for family reasons, my daughter married a farmer,” she explained.
“There’s quite a lot of diversity in the market, tree-changers, investors who buy properties and think, ‘I’ll move here one day’, young families.”
One of the innovative land developments that have “taken-off” in town, are a number of lots for recreational flyers to build homes out at the historic Narromine Airport, which trained hundreds of pilots during the dark days of World War II.
“There’s been high demand for that, with about 35 lots sold out there, called ‘Sky Park’, there’s also the World Gliding Championships on out here, showing how popular an area it is for flyers,” she said.
“We also had the Dolly Parton Festival with about 960 attending the concert, whether it’s living or commuting, it’s a very vibrant town,” she added.
Narromine Shire Mayor, Councillor Craig Davies, said that Council has sought to alleviate the housing shortage by effectively becoming the district’s major source of sub-divisions.
“Things are very tight, it’s almost impossible to get a rental property out here, it’s been so for 18–24 months, so, as a council, we’re basically the major land developer in the Shire over the past three to four years,” Cr Davies said.
“This includes at Sky Park, where we developed 27 blocks that have all basically sold within six months… we’ll eventually have 73 blocks at the aerodrome,” he added.
Another development is the Kings Park Estate on the eastern side of town, and some larger lots on Depot Road.
“These are between 1800 to 2700 square metres, and we’ve sold five of those.
“So, in one respect, we’re bringing on-line a good supply of house blocks,” he said.
Long-term capital works to effectively make the town finally flood-free, is another good sign for the Shire, he said.
“We’re working to get the flood levy banks finished, although we’re still a couple of years away, and then the whole town will be flood-free for anything up to a one-in-100-year deluge.
“Once that’s done, we can look at developing anything up to 800 more blocks in the town,” he enthused.
A fly in the ointment, however, are the crippling development costs forced on Council by the suffocating red-tape of State Government regulations.
“For instance, the ‘Biodiversity Offset Scheme,’ brought in by the last conservative government, believe it or not, can add between $50,000–$250,000 per block; it’s just crippling country towns,” he said.
“It’s estimated that an additional 1000 houses haven’t been built, I know builders who are leaving NSW, just to get away from it,” Cr Davies said.