Flying Dirty over Sydney Backyards

Bankstown Airport Expansion Scares Buyers

Home Prices Dive
No Regional Bankstown Logo

Flying Dirty over Sydney's Backyards - carcinogenic unburned fuel

Real Estate Impact of Airport

Airport proponents and their sham EIS processes downplay the depreciation airports cause on real estate values in their neighbourhood. Objective evidence, such as found by the Senate report into Sydney's Third Runway fiasco, show the costs are high. Probably as much as 20 to 30% depreciation.

Even the threat of an airport can have this effect. In Bankstown and surrounding areas, average prices of some 12,000 homes were predicted to fall by $50,000.

$50,000 per home × 12,000 homes = $600,000,000

That's $600 million that ordinary family home owners will lose to the Federal Government's stupidity and the aviation industry's greed. You won't see that costed in any EIS or government analysis of this apalling decision. Nor will you see any costing of the affects of increased noise and pollution, both on the airport, and in the air approaching it. Can you put a price on your families' health ? The loss to the families of Bankstown will far exceed $600 million.

Supporting a Thieving Mongrel

Maybe Bankstown families might reconsider their support of the airport when they realise it's going to steal so much from them as it "grows" up. Think of it like a mongrel pup that's only going to behave more and more badly as it grows. Maybe you should kill it before it got too big to handle.

It's not hard to think of cheaper and fairer ways of buying jobs than a mongrel airport. And if you're prepared to treat residents so unfairly, why should they be fair to you and let you continue running the airport just because it has always been there ? If you throw fairness out the window, like this proposal does, then fairness doesn't have to be returned by residents.

Real estate buyers can see the risk of Bankstown becoming Sydney's defacto Second Airport, as shown in this article by Fiona Connolly from the Daily Telegraph, Friday 16th February, 2001. Aviation interests should think seriously about how unfairly residents might return their unfairness...

House Prices take a Dive

"Home owners near Bankstown Airport had their biggest fears confirmed yesterday when experts said their property values were already plunging.

Sluggish sales in flight path suburbs have caused house values to fall by as much as 20 per cent, one valuer said yesterday.

Local agents said it was "virtually impossible" to sell property in flight path areas after reports that noise as looud as a jackhammer would be heard along the main flight path at Bankstown, Condell Park, Hoxton Park, Alfords Point and Menai - 24 hours a day.

The property crisis follows the Howard Government's decision last December to upgrade Bankstown airport to allow 737s to use the suburban airport.

The Government decided to boost capacity at Sydney Airport and expand Bankstown Airport by extending the main runway by 600 m to cater for larger jets rather than build a second airport at Badgery's Creek.

More than 12,000 residential properties and 35,000 residents will be affected by increased noise under the plan.

Western Sydney residential property valuer Derrick Goubran yesterday said buyer sentiment in the area was so low and house prices had fallen by $20,000 to $30,000. "Potential home buyers in that area have just focussed their attentions elsewhere," he said.

"Uncertainty about what might happen in an area like this is too great a risk for people spending their life savings on a home."

Mr Goubran said that when the Government's plans for the airport take hold, the median house price in the Bankstown area would fall from $280,000 to as little as $230,000.

Frank Nashaty, from Raine and Horne Bankstown, said panic over increased noise had "wiped out" business in his area.

"Show something that's near the airport and people just don't want to know about it", Mr Nashaty said yesterday.

"And we're not just talking about Bankstown."

Mr Nashaty said sales had been "terrible" with only two auctions in February compared with a dozen at other times.

For the first time in months, Owen O'Brian, from Century 21 at Condell Park, will have no properties to auction this month.

Roland and Pauline Boothroyd and their teenage sons will next month move from their four-bedroom Wattle Grove home, which is less than 5 km from the airport. But the move has come at a cost. It took them more than three months to sell the home - even after dropping the price $12,000.

- Fiona Connolly, in the Daily Telegraph, Friday 16th February, 2001

 

Don't it always seem to go
But you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone.
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.
-Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi.

Flying dirty over Sydney Backyards

First Published 19th February, 2001. Last Revised

Last Change: vdeck mod

Visitor since Sat 21-Feb-2004.