The SA suburbs essential workers on a budget will struggle to secure property in

Nurses, teachers and police officers are among the essential workers struggling to secure properties in more than 50 SA suburbs. Here’s where and why.

Essential workers have been locked out of more than 50 South Australian suburbs, forcing many to travel long distances to be able to provide crucial community services.

Exclusive new research from Suburbtrends reveals the suburbs where essential service workers – including nurses, teachers and police officers – with a top budget of $600,000 can’t find or afford homes.

In SA, there were 56 suburbs where there are either not enough listings or the median price exceeds $600,000.

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Woodville-Cheltenham, Mitchell Park, Flinders Park, Adelaide, Prospect and Highbury-Dernancourt were among the areas too expensive for them to purchase a house in.

Properties in the northern suburbs were most affordable but in many there weren’t enough listings to choose from, particularly for units.

Suburbtrends founder Kent Lardner said the analysis spelled out a very different way of living for future generations.

“Without access to inherited wealth or contributions from parents, many in the coming decades will only know apartment life,” he said.

“If we are to keep essential workers in the cities, we may need to start thinking outside the box and back to what was more common during the 19th and early 20th centuries, when Australia was undergoing rapid industrialisation and urbanisation – company housing.

“While this still exists in mining and tourism sectors today, we may need to consider this as an option for many essential workers in some of our most expensive cities.”

Essential workers are generally those who can’t work from home, and include those who work in sectors such as health and emergency services, utilities, freight and logistics, transport, education, aged care, retail and supply chains.

For the purpose of their research, Suburbtrends looked at agent advised sales over the past year and analysed the suburbs that would still be affordable to essential workers like police officers, firefighters and nurses with a $600,000 budget, even with a further 5 per cent price increase.

The research showed there were only 860 suburbs nationally where a $600,000 budget could still buy a house, well below the 1330 suburbs that were now unaffordable.

The new PropTrack Housing Affordability Index revealed that home prices across Australia were at their worst levels in at least three decades.

In South Australia, the report shows that housing affordability has “never been worse”.

The report described housing affordability across the nation as “alarming”, noting that the share of homes that a median-income household could afford had never been lower.

United Workers Union national secretary Tim Kennedy said essential workers were under stress due to wages failing to keep up with inflation and housing costs.

He said reforms and affordable housing initiatives were “rebalancing a system that has too long tilted the playing field against workers”.

But Mr Lardner said if cities were to retain essential workers, family-friendly and affordable apartments were key.

HOW I MADE IT WORK AS A NURSE

Madison Nothrop has purchased land at Villawood Properties’ St Andrews estate to build her first house. Picture: Dean Martin.

Villawood Properties’ Care Worker Support Program helped Ms Nothrop purchase the land for her home, which is almost finished. Picture: Dean Martin.

Madison Nothrop can’t wait to move into her new Andrews Farm home at Villawood Properties’ St Andrews estate.

The aged care nurse, who also worked on the pandemic frontline administering thousands of Covid vaccinations, bought the land at the end of 2021.

She is now just months off moving in to her freshly built three-bedroom house – hopefully by the end of the year.

“I’m really impatient, the waiting game is not for me,” Ms Nothrop, 23, joked.

She was always going to buy real estate one day, but Ms Nothrop said Villawood Properties’ Care Worker Support Program helped her purchase sooner by offering her a $10,000 saving.

The program – which is open to nursing care workers, paramedics, firefighters, police officers, teachers and personal carers – now offers up to $20,000 savings on land and house and land packages as a way of recognising their hard work.

“It would have probably taken my longer without it and prices just keep getting higher and higher,” Ms Nothrop said.

“I think I secured a very good deal at the time.”

Ms Nothrop is currently living close by with her parents, who were the ones to initially encourage her to inquire about the program after seeing a television advertisement about it.

She was the first person to benefit from the program in South Australia.

“It’s very important because it allowed me to take that step into adulthood,” she said.

While she works at Hope Valley, Ms Nothrop said she chose the St Andrews estate because it was affordable and closer to family, including her grandparents who live in the Riverland.