Shaun Hollis, Yorke Peninsula Country Times

Combined, the Yorke Peninsula, Barossa and Mid North regions have recorded the largest annual home price rise of any regional area in Australia in the past year, new data has revealed.

Market analyst PropTrack’s March data shows regional South Australia registered the highest growth of any area in the country outside of the major cities, while the Yorke-Barossa-Mid North region recorded the biggest price hike in the state outside of Adelaide.

Home prices in the region grew more than 15 per cent to an average of $421,000 in the past year, while the growth rate across regional SA was close to 13 per cent, pushing state-wide prices to an average of $439,000.

The average total price growth across the country was less than 7 per cent.

Housing Industry Association SA regional director Stephen Knight said home affordability and availability are two of the state’s most critical challenges.

He said the population of the state is growing more rapidly than in past years on the back of increased migration, people moving here from other states and people returning home.

“We’ve got 1.7 per cent population growth, which is unheard of for South Australia, so we’ve got a massive demand on housing supply,” Mr Knight said.

“You only have to see the front page of the papers almost every day, with rent rises, cost-of-living increases, cost of house materials and labour all contributing to high costs of housing.”

Mr Knight said the state does not have enough houses right now, so has low vacancy rates, helping drive prices even higher.

And the demand for housing is going up but the supply of homes is going down.

“The average price of a house in South Australia has risen by $85,000 in the past 12 months, so that’s a massive increase and clearly puts housing out of reach of a lot of people,” he said.

There has been a shortage of houses in the state’s regional areas for a long time, he said, but some massive infrastructure projects and increases in employment opportunities in agriculture have driven demand for housing even higher.

“We have other constraints (of) land availability for housing, planning rules — all these things impact on availability of housing and it’s not something you can quickly react to,” Mr Knight said.

“It takes time, there’s a decent lead-in time to building new homes and of course construction time.”

Although there are no quick solutions, he said the industry is aware of the need to address the housing shortages and rising prices.

“There’s a lot of people working towards solving the issues (and) it’s going to require investment,” he said.

“I think all the stakeholders have really got to pull together and work together.

“I know that regional development boards are keenly aware of it and governments are certainly aware of it.

“Working towards more land being available is a good start.”

Mr Knight cited one example of how regional employers are bringing in transportable homes to attract workers on a potato farm in the state’s South East.

“That’s a way of securing your workforce,” he said.

“That’s where industry is actually working it out for themselves.” 

This article appeared in Yorke Peninsula Country Times, 9 April 2024.