Thornlie: Blending suburban comfort and affordability
This Western Australian hotspot is proving popular with families for its spacious homes and excellent facilities in the Gosnells area.
Thornlie is one of the suburbs listed in Smart Property Investment’s FAST 50 report for 2025, which launched in February 2024.
The report and ranking drew on the insights of a 12-strong investment expert panel and recent housing performance drawn from open-source data, which aim to give unparalleled insights into the Australian suburbs that are set for future growth.
Located 15 kilometres south-east of Perth’s central business district, Thornlie is a bustling area which offers affordable suburban comfort alongside strong transport links to the greater metropolitan region.
Thornlie has developed in various stages since the first homes were constructed in the 1950s and early 1960s.
These earlier properties were aimed at inner city dwellers searching for a more spacious setting, this sentiment being present in Thornlie’s typically large blocks of 700–900 square metres.
Thornlie is also home to the Radburn style Crestwood Estate housing development, a unique approach which sees the rear of houses facing towards the street while the front facades face one another over common yards.
Notably, Crestwood Estate was described by original Radburn architect Clarence Stein as the first perfect Radburn scheme in the world which led to the community receiving international recognition that continues to this day.
From the 1980s onwards, the Castle Glen and Forest Lake housing estates have primarily focused on providing affordable housing for young families and other new home buyers.
Thornlie very much embodies a family-focused approach in containing a number of education facilities such as its own TAFE location.
The area also contains a number of recreational areas such as Thornlie Park, which is home to the Thornlie Tennis Club, and a variety of playground equipment suited for all ages.
For a more serene outing, the Hume Road Wildlife Reserve contains a scenic walking trail displaying the diverse flora and fauna that call the bushland home.
Thornlie enjoys strong transport links with the Albany Highway connecting the suburb to the CBD and the Roe Highway linking it to the greater regional road network.
With the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia data showing Thornlie’s mere 10-day median leasing time to be among the fastest in Western Australia last year, Thornlie is only going to become increasingly popular with savvy investors.
Check out which other suburbs made the cut in the FAST 50 2025 report here.