Mandurah becoming a ‘new 21st century city’

Already Western Australia’s fastest-growing regional city, Mandurah will undergo further dramatic growth in coming decades if the calculations of KPMG Australia partner Bernard Salt prove accurate.

Mr Salt told a recent Property Council of Australia luncheon, Australia on the Move: Population Growth and Dwelling Demand 2001 – 2031, that Mandurah would undergo a 223 per cent growth in net additional dwellings by 2031.

“Dwelling growth in Mandurah would see 1,800 new dwellings per year until 2011,” he said. “This will increase to 2,300 per year during the 2020s.” 

Mr Salt said demand for housing in Perth would gently subside over the forecast years.

“Perth dwelling growth will be 13,000 per year up to 2011,” he said. “This will drop to 11,000 per year during the 2020s.”  

This fall-off would be a

result of the ‘baby-boomer’ demographic wedge moving into suburbanised seachange towns such as Mandurah.  

“Some towns will grow sluggishly, or will transfer their growth to the coast,” Mr Salt told the luncheon audience.

The big markets in Australia over 30 years to 2031 would include Perth, with 425,000 net new dwellings, he said, while Mandurah was forecast to have 66,000.

“Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast and Mandurah are Australia’s new cities of the 21st century.”

Mr Salt said that there had been shrinkage in the average Australian household since 1981, which was forecast to fall further in the years up to 2031.

“The number of persons per occupied dwelling in Perth in Mandurah a city on the move

1981 was 3.09,” he said. “This will fall to 2.37 in 2031. Mandurah will see a reduction from 3.17 in 1980 to 2.30 in 2031.”

Mr Salt suggested a breakdown in the nuclear family was one possible reason for this change, with forecasts families, which accounted for 41 per cent of all household social structures in 1991, would comprise just 24 per cent in 2031.  

“By 2011 the traditional nuclear family loses supremacy as the dominant household type to couples,” he said. “By 2021 families and couples are eclipsed by singles as the leading social structure at the household level.”

Mr Salt said there would need to be a change in attitudes towards immigration over the next 10 years as skilled migrants filled the gap in housing demand, which was forecast to slow down during the 2020s.  

The study provides an assessment of the future demand for housing across 41 cities in Australia until 2031. It was released in June 2005 at a national conference of industry leaders in Noosa Heads and was prepared for the Property Council of Australia and the Residential Development Council of Australia.

Mr Salt is a partner of property advisory services for KPMG Australia. He is also the author of The Big Shift and is a leading adviser to business on demographic and consumer trends.