Why investors are hunting a piece of the Leppington pie
From farmland to residential hotspot, south-west Sydney’s Leppington is fast becoming a haven for investors in Australia’s most expensive capital city.
Ask anyone who lives around Leppington, and they’ll tell you that 20 years ago, when the area was farmland and stained by manure, they would never have predicted it’d become a bustling, family-friendly neighbourhood on the doorstep of Sydney’s new airport.
Former but not current residents would also be shocked to find Leppington was one of four NSW suburbs named in the highly coveted Smart Property Investment Fast 50 ranking for 2024.
The report and ranking combined the insights of a 14-strong investment expert panel with recent housing performance drawn from open source data and aim to give unparalleled insight into the Australian suburbs that are set for future growth.
Lying on Sydney’s outer fringes, Leppington is one of the fastest-growing suburbs across the country, highlighted by its population and the number of private dwellings, which tripled between the 2016 and 2021 Census.
Despite the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) sending the national property market spiralling into a downturn compared to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) over the back half of 2022 and start of 2023, according to CoreLogic, property prices remained resilient through this time, recording a 60.2 per cent rise in the 12 months to January 2023.
As a result of this booming growth, Leppington boasts a median home price of just over $1.1 million, while landlords are able to ask tenants to fork out rents of approximately $680 per week.
However, the region’s promise is not rooted in its booming growth over the last 12 months; back in 2021, Leppington was voted one of the strongest-performing markets following the 2021 Sydney lockdown, and moving forward, several projects exist in the area’s pipeline to ensure its growth can be in some part maintained moving forward.
The NSW government has earmarked Leppington and surrounding areas as being within the South-West Growth Area, a project undertaken by the state government to connect new suburbs with the new, state-of-the-art Western Sydney airport in nearby Badgerys Creek and the broader Western Sydney Employment Area.
Prominent property expert Matthew Lewison noted these infrastructure programs as the primary drivers of Leppington’s appeal to Australian property investors.
As part of this plan, over 54,000 new homes have been or are projected to be built in Leppington and surrounding areas as the government scrambles to ensure adequate accommodation is afforded to a population expected to hit 120,000 by 2041.
Also adding to the region’s appeal is its proximity to several major networks, with the M5 and M7 motorways within a 15-minute drive of Leppington, connecting the suburb to wider Sydney and beyond, while the newly constructed Leppington train station and car park facilitate hundreds of workers travelling into Sydney’s central business district and surrounds within 45 minutes.
Zooming out to the wider Greater Western Sydney region, the area is “well and truly earning its status as the location of Sydney’s second CBD.”
According to the NSW Department of Planning, the entire region is set to grow by almost one million people — or 46 per cent — over the next two decades.
A recent Smart Property Investment article highlighted the 10 infrastructure projects that are pushing Western Sydney property prices through the roof.
To see where else was voted as part of the Smart Property Investment Fast 50 2024 report, click here.