There is a huge gap between housing prices in popular Australian school districts and the accommodation of international students in the city, especially in Melbourne. As local parents or investors scramble to buy coveted school district housing, housing prices in high-profile primary and secondary schools in various states have increased by more than 35% year-on-year.
The high cost of private education, rising unemployment and improved performance in public schools have also boosted the popularity of public schools. According to data from EdStart, which provides tuition subsidies for families, although the tuition inflation rate has dropped to 1%, compared with 2.8% last year and more than 3% in 2019, it will be more difficult for the family budget backlogged by the epidemic to meet the high cost of private education.
The top private school’s grade 12 tuition fee is more than 30,000 Australian dollars, plus uniforms and other extracurricular fees. Many parents choose to let their children go to public primary schools and then transfer to private secondary schools to reduce costs. Factors affecting the demand for real estate in a school district include the school’s academic performance, scale, modernization, whether it is a coeducational school or a single coeducational school, and the curriculum. Domain’s analysis showed that the housing price increase in the best-performing elementary and middle schools was seventeen times the increase in the state capital (2%) and five times the increase in the township market (7%).
