Look up Bellfield on Wiki and it first says: "for the murderer, see Levi Bellfield". It's not an auspicious start. But we want the tiny (population less than 2000) Melbourne suburb of Bellfield.
The suburb is easier to find in person. You slip east along Bell Street from industrial Preston, cross the bridge over Darebin Creek, which forms one of the 'burb's borders, turn right, and you're there.
Bellfield takes up one side of busy Bell Street. The other side is home to Melbourne Polytechnic, Bell Street Mall and the former Olympic Village in West Heidelberg, which housed international athletes during the 1956 Olympic Games. Its interesting past hasn't led to a fortunate future and it's now rather notorious public housing.
Bellfield itself has a large smattering of commission houses, including some very solid cement homes. However when these freestanding homes slip out of the Department of Housing's hands, they're transformed. Right now you can't drive along Bellfield's narrow streets without being held up by some development-related equipment, be it a cement truck pouring a new slab, or a delivery van offloading sparkling white baths for brand new small-scale developments.
A post shared by James Goulopoulos (@teamjamesgoulopoulos) on Mar 10, 2017 at 1:17am PST
A recent real estate Instagram post shows a house for sale at 125 Oriel Road, Bellfield, ripe for redevelopment.
See, while you could pick up a home here (and they are mostly homes; units - a couple to a block - are only a recent phenomenon and there are next to no flats) a few years back for something shy of $500,000, today Bellfield's booming. Families and investors are lining up to get in. The median price here is now $800,000, up 14.6 per cent in the past year, according to Domain Group data.
Hocking Stuart Ivanhoe agent Helen Whelan says that some buyers in the area only have Bellfield in their sights, but there's short supply and big demand. She points to the recent auction of 12 Sullivan Street, Bellfield, where a classic unrenovated brick home that had been "very well maintained" on just over 600 square metres had eight or nine bidders in a crowd of around 50. It sold for $887,000. "There's very low stock," says Whelan. "And some people are literally only looking to buy in Bellfield."
Despite the boom, there are a quite a few things on the average home buyer's "must have" list that are missing here. Like trams. And trains. If you like your public transport, you'll be on the bus here, baby. Or you'll be doing all your commuting from leafy Ivanhoe, because that prestigious suburb (median of $1,223,500 according to Domain Group) is just past the dump that borders Bellfield.
Oh the dump. Yes, well. The good side is that if you have any recyclables, or old chemicals that need disposing of, your local tip (aka waste recovery centre) is on the corner of Waterdale and Banksia in Bellfield.
There's something else. It doesn't even have a shopping strip. Not one. Still, it's obviously ticking boxes, and one of them is proximity to the city. It's just nine kilometres from the CBD. It's got good parks and is buffered on one side by around 600 metres of Darebin Creek, which is a sweet spot for a cycle or walk, with fairly decent tracks.
"It's the location, and it's a small, 'nichey' pocket," says Whelan. "And a lot of the homes in the area are starting to be a good age - 50, 60 years old. People are looking to extend these homes, making it a little bit bigger, and making it their family homes."
But Whelan says it's not just owner-occupiers in the buying mix. "You've got investors looking to buy to rent it out for the next few years, and people who are in the development side, looking to rent it while they get plans and permits to build, say, two units there."
Four things you didn't know about Bellfield
- The Yarra Valley Hockey Club's Vic League 1 women's reserves won the 2016 premiership, with the women's just missing out, but both jump to the Premier League this year.
- Banksia Street was once home to Heidelberg High, which became Banksia La Trobe Secondary College. The building was demolished in 2014.
- Construction has started on a new Tan Track Circuit (take that, South Yarra!). The 1km-long tan track will surround Ford Park.
- Bellfield was listed as number six for most burgled suburbs of 2015-2016, with one in 30 homes burgled, but they'll probably blame their West Heidelberg neighbours for that (they share postcode 3081 with them).
