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Speaker 1: Welcome to Sydney Property Insider, giving you news and insights on the Sydney property market. Your hosts are Michelle May, a professional buyers' agent and owner of an independent buyers' agency, and Marcus Roberts, a member of Property Investment Professionals of Australia and owner of leading mortgage broker firm, Brighter Finance. Marcus: Good morning and welcome to another episode of the Sydney Property Insider podcast, your periodical podcast series that talks about all things property related in the city of Sydney. Michelle, how are you doing this fine morning? Michelle: Good thank you. How are you? Marcus: Doing well. This is our second attempt after we were unsuccessful with the first attempt a few seconds ago. So hopefully this one we can record all the way through, which would be lovely. Michelle: Well, you'd think after so many episodes in nearly three years in, we'd know the ropes by now, but forgive us. Marcus: We're certainly the lowest paid amateurs of this. Michelle: *laughs* That's right. So today we are going to get cracking with another suburb spotlight, and this case is going to be Campbelltown. Marcus: That's right. So we are going further afield with our suburb spotlight series this year. We've had quite a lot of feedback from people saying that they loved the series and they want some suburbs outside the inner ring of what we've looked at in the past. So we're going to try and focus on different suburbs, some inside that ring, some outside that ring and, really, across the city of Sydney. So today we're going off to Campbelltown. And certainly a lot of learning for myself. My wife has worked in Campbelltown Hospital before, we've visited Campbelltown in the past, but I've certainly never lived there and haven't gone out that way too many times. Michelle, what have you found in terms of the history of the area? Page 1 of 8 Michelle: Well, I found this one fascinating. As you know, I lean heavily on https://home.dictionaryofsydney.org/ and nd let me tell you what I've found. So the city of Campbelltown, is actually only one of 4 cities within the Sydney metropolitan area. And this was actually, prior to European settlement, inhabited by the Tharawal people. Not long after the arrival of the first fleet in 1788, a small herd of 6 cattle escaped and weren't seen again by the British settlers for 7 years. They were, however, spotted by the Tharawal people, and that was actually reflected in their rock art site which is called Bull Cave, near Campbelltown. They described the cattle to the British explorers and in 1795, so 7 years later, they found a herd of around 60 cattle grazing in an area now known as Camden. The colonial administration was keen for the herd to establish itself so they forbade any killing of the cattle, or settlement, in that area. But John Macarthur had other ideas because he wanted to establish sheep, and so he convinced the British government to overrule the administration and grant him 5,000 acres, which is 20 square kilometers, just south of the Nepean River, in 1805. And the Tharawal people initially worked with the local farmers, but a drought in 1814 led to large number of the neighbouring Gandangara people moving into that area in search for food as well. And so between the British and the Gundangara people, it led to skirmishes, as it was described, which is an episode of irregular and unpremeditated fighting, especially between small or outlying parts of armies or fleets. Marcus: Skirmishes are also what my wife and I refer to as the Uber Eats delivery wars in which we decide which of the Uber Eats options we're going to have, and settle eventually on the same Chinese one we've had for the last 3 weeks. Michelle: Oh, gosh. Well, unfortunately this didn't end well of course, with deaths on either side in this case. So Governor Macquarie felt a permanent settlement would lead to order in the area, and so Campbelltown, which is actually his wife's maiden name, Campbell, was born in 1820. It developed rather slowly and it was actually after this period that Campbelltown's most famous incident occurred because in 1826, local farmer, Fredrick Fisher, disappeared. According to folklore, his ghost appeared sitting on a fence rail over a creek, just south of the town, and pointed to a site where his body was later found to be buried. So in memory of that incident, the Fisher Ghost Festival is still held each November in Campbelltown. So Campbelltown's population steadily increased in the decades following. We’ve got the southern rail line which was extended in 1858 leading of course as with all other Sydney suburbs to further development. Campbelltown was actually the first country town in New South Wales to have piped Page 2 of 8 water in 1888, and then in the period between the World Wars the local power station was built as well to supply electricity, so it's actually doing quite well. Michelle: Then during excavations for post-war development for residential property, neo-Neanderthal remains were found. Now, this was later concluded to be the remains of the direct ancestors of the current local population, and this area had been settled for at least 10,000 years prior to European settlement. So skip forward a few years, Campbelltown was designated a satellite city to the New South Wales Planning Authority and a regional capital by south west of Sydney. And prior to this it was still really quite rural in nature. And, of course then with extensive building and population growth, we now see Campbelltown as it is today, a vibrant satellite city to one of the 4 cities within the Sydney metropolitan area. Marcus: And it's very much a growing area. So the difference between going out to Campbelltown, in terms of the number of people and the number of dwellings out there 5 years ago versus 3 years ago versus today, it's really staggering to see the growth of the area, especially as Sydney's boundaries continue to grow. So what was once maybe a satellite city really feels much more like a suburb of Sydney, and certainly you see that with the extension of roads, with further development of transport lines out to the Campbelltown area. Michelle: Absolutely. And that brings me to statistics. I know for those listening, they love a few numbers here and there. So let's look at houses and units, what does your money actually buy you in Campbelltown? So we looked at the median prices today as they stand, and it's quite remarkable that the difference between houses and unit medium price is actually not that much. It's the smallest that I've seen in the series so far. So the median house price in Campbelltown today is $592,500, so just a tad under $600,000. And for units, the median is actually $450,000. Now, the land size for houses is quite large compared to the suburbs closer in. 563 square meters you get for this. And so in the last year we had just over 130 houses sold in that area. So obviously Campbelltown, like many of the outer ring suburbs, are still seeing a lot of unit development so we're seeing more competition and more opportunity to buy the units there. But looking at houses, they seem to be very good value still there. Marcus: Just looking at these statistics that you've drawn up and that you've located, so one of the things that's amazing is the difference in cost between some of the properties in the area. So you've got, I guess the lowest purchase in 2020 was at $40,000, but that stretched all the way to just shy of $4 million, at $3.975 million in 2020 for a house in the area. Page 3 of 8 Michelle: Well, I wouldn't count the lowest. When you're looking at those lower numbers, they are usually just estate transfers so they wouldn't be genuine sales. You can discount those. So with houses and across the board, and units, It's usually just if a husband and wife part ways, that the husband or wife transfers the property into the other person's name and so, therefore, there's a transfer of money there. So I wouldn't take those outlier sales as a proper sale. So you've got to be careful with those numbers. Marcus: So, Michelle, that's really interesting to hear of the units and the houses. If we were to look in the area, what is the makeup of the actual types of dwellings in the area? So your houses, your units, what is the makeup of the area of Campbelltown? Michelle: So when we look at the information that we get from the most recent Censuswhich was in 2016, or the information we get on APM Price Finder, the separate houses made up 54.3% and units made up 26%. But given it's been 4 years I would have imagined that the unit percentage would have come up and the housing percentage would have come down, so potentially just shy of 50% is now separate houses, I would imagine. So, obviously, that changes over time. Marcus: Of course. So the makeup of the people of Campbelltown, this is another suburb where we have a slightly higher proportion of females to males.