Property Solutions Needed
With the median price of a house in Perth breaking the $1 million threshold for the first time, according to the latest Domain figures, it is a timely question to ask if our housing policy is fit for Purpose.
The answer is not as simple as the common explanation that the demand for houses is outstripping supply.
Rather, the answer is more complex and goes to the very heart of our under-stress housing sector in WA. In particular, one important new demographic trend raising the question as to whether our current housing policy is fit for purpose is our ageing population.
Thanks to better health care, we are living longer and, as a result, need more housing choices in later life than are currently available.
This ageing time bomb is underlined by the fact that the proportion of people aged 65 and over in WA is expected to rise significantly from 16 per cent in 2022 to 20 per cent by 2036.
We have clearly seen this ageing trend in the number of West Australians living to 100 years of age and over.
It may surprise many people that the number of centenarians in WA has surged by 180 per cent to more than 700 people in this age group during the past decade.
The focus on urban sprawl has meant that many of these ageing West Australians do not have the housing options to downsize in the area where they live, and therefore free up their homes for their families or for redevelopment.
Many of them are trapped in large homes with high maintenance costs because there is a dire lack of new infill housing in their local established suburb.
“Many of these ageing West Australians do not have the housing options to downsize in the area where they live”
The option of moving to a large housing estate in the outer suburbs far from their current surrounding network of friends, community and care is not an option.
This focus on urban sprawl has underpinned housing policy in Perth for many decades, and it is a housing policy that is now under massive strain because it is struggling to deliver the housing outcomes that our changing society needs.
For example, at a time when our birth rate is on a long-term decline and families are getting smaller, do we really need these large four-bedroom,two-bathroom homes that now dominate the outer suburbs of Perth? Social statistics indicate we do not.
The latest ABS figures show that WA is the least fertile State in Australia, with a fertility rate of just 1.434, which is well behind the national rate of 1.481.
This falling birth rate is already having an impact on the Western Australian housing market, with the latest census figures, for example, revealing that WA has the highest number of spare bedrooms in Australia.
It found that 53.6 per cent of homes in WA had spare bedrooms compared with 33.2 per cent for the Northern Territory.
So home buyers in WA arewasting thousands of dollars to build new homes with largeamounts of space they will never use.
The reality is that Perth does need more homes – but the correct type of homes.
We urgently need a housing mix that includes infill homes that are more sustainable in terms of our available land use and suitable for the changing demographics in our society.
And infill homes that are more affordable for our entire community, that reduce the massive financial cost of government supporting infrastructure to support urban sprawl.
That is why we need to urgently rethink our housing policy, with a strong focus on providing West Australians with greater housing choices in the near-city areas.
We can deliver thousands of new homes that are more affordable to our community in boutique-style low-rise housing developments quickly if we have the correct policy settings.
Not only do we need these homes now, but also in the future, as we transition to households that are becoming smaller.
WA Housing Minister John Carey should be congratulated on his recent announcements to boost housing infill in Perth, but much more can be achieved with an imaginative and ambitious infill strategy.
Now is the time for the State Government to set up a task force to formulate this infill strategy that should be aggressively supported by all levels of government when completed.
In particular, the task force should examine the massive subsidies taxpayers spend annually on developing urban sprawl housing that is now questionable in terms of demographic changes in our society, and whether this money would be better spent on encouraging more appropriate infill housing.
I strongly recommend that this task force should not be comprised of theorists but of people with boots-on-the-ground, practical and realistic experience like myself.
The West Australian: James Limnios Opinion Article (Managing Director of Limnios Property Group)
23 January 2026
