kiwish

Hi. I can do a search on the internet for best suburbs in Melbourne, but I am keen to hear your views as a Brit living in Melbourne.
We are looking for a 4 bed house for Aus$1mill. Is Werribee OK? Where else? We are looking for a little bit of land for garaging too.

Can you help? Thank you.

brits1

This may be of some help but “love it or list it Australia” series is on in the UK at the moment a lot of the shows are in Melbourne and they give you some really good information on the subs ie distance from Melbourne/Schools/ Shops/Sporting facilities median house prices etc and you actually “get” to see the subs as they drive around which helps. Good luck

NJJ

Best suburbs in West, hmm. All depends, I like the Bacchus Marsh / Melton / Gisborne areas but public transport is pretty much non existant. Werribee, Hoppers Crossing, Laverton areas have good links to the city but have a more built up / congested feeling.

kiwish

Thank you

kiwish

That's a great idea. I will hunt that series down. Thanks : )

scrubbedexpat143

Hm. With a cool million to spend, you have a multiplicity of options, even in today's inflated prices for anything to do with property in Oz. Add to this that house prices are currently in a downward spiral, and likely to drop even further when this country slips into an inevitable recession given our dismal political situation (= mess) and a newly elected federal government of puppets devoted to taking everything from the workers and giving everything to the rich, or as someone recently wrote in one of our media sites, "doohnibor" - or Robin Hood in reverse. Of course this is political, so I'll say no more.

Here in Melvyn the eastern suburbs are too expensive, the northern suburbs too iffy (and also expensive), the eastern suburbs too overcrowded and with transport problems - leaving the western suburbs, the area most of our 1 million new migrants over the next five years will likely settle in. So if the West appeals to you, get in here fast, and buy quickly.

Of the suburbs mentioned by others in this thread, Melton - a fairly new area with lots of modern houses, new retirement communities popping up like cactus in paddocks, fairly good shopping and a relatively easy commute by rail to the city center - may appeal to you. Me, I find it characterless and some of the areas are rather dismal. Until a few years ago it was a dumping ground for social security recipients in need of low income rentals, but this has now largely changed, young urban hipsters are moving in and buying houses, swimming pools are starting to pop up everywhere, and public transport is showing imminent signs of actually improving. So there is hope, even with the Ozzydollar at a ridiculous 61 US cents, which makes buying just about anything not produced in Australia (= 99.5% of stuff) dazzlingly expensive.

Cynical, well, maybe. I've lived here long enough to know when the going was good and the place was one of the plus points of the Western World. Now racketeering business and corrupt politics have largely wrecked just about everything, last year we opted to vote in a new government in a desperate attempt to change the grab-grab-grab culture in place for the last decade, and what did we get - more of the same, empty promises for the future nd cuts to just about everything (except free money to the rich and no tax to business).

For all that, life on a day to day basis is good here, food is still fresh and mostly produced locally or at least regionally, services work more or less as they should and the wine is almost as good as anything you will get in regional France. The sun shines a lot when it isn't bucketing down with rain, the trains run on time, the bus service when you have one in your neighborhood can be okay too, supermarket prices are showing signs of coming down a little - and one of the very best things at least for this expat who came here in 1974 and has never wanted to leave, is the niceness of your average Aussie, at least out of the cities. Good people who are happy to help out and are pleasant to deal with goes a long way to make things here just that much better.

So yes, come on over, find your dream house, buy it, move in, settle. The way inflation is hitting us of late, even if you were to decide in a year's time that it isn't really the place for you, likely as not you will sell the property for a profit. So in a way, win-win.

Let us know how things go, or went, for you, please. We are always interested in such stories, however they turn out.