Matthew Abraham: The great disappearing act as house blocks get smaller and apartments spring up

MATTHEW Abraham laments the downsizing of house blocks and the rise of apartments in Adelaide.

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IT had bright orange shag-pile carpet, hot and cold-running Cat Stevens and room for three at a squeeze. No, it wasn’t a Sandman panel van. It was our first home — a two-bedroom, cream brick unit at Torrens Park in a small group of seven.

They had no space for washing machines so we all shared a communal laundry block. But what they did have was land. The units were, and still are, set on a generous rectangle of land with lawn, shrubs and even a creek cutting across the front entrance.

Our end unit also had its own pocket-handkerchief backyard, big enough for a patch of lawn, geraniums, a clothesline and a back fence that, with the aid of a white sheet, doubled as a screen for outside slide evenings.

Oh, the wild parties we had all gathered around the glowing Hanimex projector, quaffing Ben Ean Moselle under the moon and stars.

Now the notion of people having a little patch of earth to call their own has gone the way of slide nights, sweet white wine, shaggin’ wagons and dinosaurs.

Last Monday, the Sunday Mail’s Giuseppe Tauriello reported on a slick 3D model of Adelaide’s future skyline.

And the future is high-rise, from the 135m-tall Adelaidean hotel and apartments project to its neighbouring 118m-tall student accommodation tower next door. You can never have too many high-rise student tower blocks. God help us.

Daniel Gannon, ex-officio Liberal leader-in-waiting and SA head of the Property Council, got pretty excited by the 3D model. He would have loved our slide nights.

“South Australians have been trading-in verandas for balconies as #Adelaide transitions to a city that transpires to grow up rather than grow out,” he enthused on Twitter.

Not all South Australians, it would seem. Certainly not Mr Gannon who, after a major extension to his very traditional Prospect home, complete with outdoor pizza oven and landscaped gardens, has recently sold up and bought another traditional house to flip or flop in Trinity Gardens.

No balconies for this little black duck. And who could blame him? He’s got a beaut young family and they obviously place a premium on growing out, not up.

How many people “choose” a balcony over a backyard only because they have been priced out of the market for a house and yard? That’s not much of a choice.

But it does explain why you now just about need tickets to get into Adelaide’s increasingly crowded playgrounds and parks.

The balcony option is the end result of a shambolic policy that has seen government-manipulated land prices soar, block sizes shrink and taxpayer-funded carrots steering first-home buyers into buying off-the-plan apartments.

The simple first homebuyers grant has been replaced by a dizzyingly convoluted system of grants for new builds only and stamp duty relief for off-the-plan apartments.

Treasurer Rob Lucas tells me he will not be extending first homebuyer incentives as his focus is on delivering the emergency services levy and payroll tax cuts, while covering the new RAH black hole. In other words, first homebuyers shouldn’t hold their breath hoping for a Lucas miracle.

Developers love high-rise apartments because they deliver big bang for their bucks and piggyback on existing road, power, water, sewerage, shops and other infrastructure.

While the city goes high-rise, land supply for traditional housing is being strangled. Deliberately.

Incredibly, Adelaide now has the smallest lot sizes in the nation at 371sq m, compared to 450sq m just 10 years ago. Over the same period, the median lot price has risen from $133,000 to $220,000.

It is simply weird that a small capital city with a declining population and oodles of land has so little land.

Maybe Don Dunstan’s dream of a satellite “virgin city” at Monarto, near Murray Bridge, wasn’t such a bad one after all. Many young families are now building homes on affordable land in Murray Bridge anyway, and driving to work in Adelaide — just an hour down the best road in the state.

A high-speed commuter rail service would work but, currently, the passenger trains roll right through Murray Bridge without stopping.

Dunstan dreamt of a small but beautiful city at Monarto with spacious housing, cycle paths and parklands.

It is now an open-plains zoo, which is nice. At least the lions have plenty of land to call their own.