Ballarat's Planning Decisions Now Will Shape Housing For Generation

Ballarat's median house price has fallen roughly 6 percent over the past 18 months to sit around $545,000, according to CoreLogic figures tracked through June 2026 — but that cooling market hasn't translated into relief for the thousands of renters, essential workers, and aspiring first-home buyers who are finding the Central Highlands increasingly unaffordable. The gap between what's theoretically available and what people can actually access is widening, and the planning decisions sitting on council tables right now will determine which way that gap goes.

The timing matters because Ballarat City Council is midway through reviewing its Housing Strategy, a document that hasn't been substantially updated since 2021. That review was expected to produce interim policy guidance by August 2026. At the same time, the Victorian government's Planning for Melbourne and Regions policy — which pushes councils to identify medium-density corridors — is landing in regional cities with very different housing markets from the one it was designed for. Ballarat isn't Melbourne's outer west. What works in Melton doesn't automatically translate to Wendouree or Sebastopol.

Pressure points on the ground

The suburbs absorbing most of the growth pressure are well-known to anyone who's tried to rent in them recently. Delacombe, on Ballarat's southern fringe, has seen a cluster of new estates approved over the past four years, with lots on Gaffney Road and the surrounding Illoura development selling off the plan for between $195,000 and $260,000. But the infrastructure has not kept pace: the local primary school is already operating near capacity, and the nearest maternal and child health centre is a 20-minute drive toward Sebastopol. Residents in the newer streets are effectively making a bet that services will follow the population. History suggests that bet doesn't always pay off quickly.

In the inner north, around Macarthur Street and the edges of Lake Wendouree, the opposite problem is asserting itself. Infill development — dual occupancies, three-storey apartment proposals — is generating neighbourhood objections at a rate that's clogging VCAT's regional planning list. The Ballarat Community Health service on Grandview Grove has flagged to council that client catchments are shifting as lower-income households are pushed further from services they rely on. That displacement is quiet and hard to measure, but it's real.

The Ballarat Tenants Union, which operates out of offices on Armstrong Street North, reported a 34 percent increase in contacts seeking rental assistance between January and May 2026 compared with the same period in 2024. The average weekly rent for a three-bedroom house in Ballarat now sits at $420, a figure that consumes more than 30 percent of the gross income of a registered nurse on the award rate — the threshold generally accepted as housing stress.

What the council decides next matters more than the property market

The Housing Strategy review has two live questions that will produce concrete outcomes. First, whether council rezones a corridor along Sturt Street — from the city centre toward Alfredton — to allow five-to-seven storey residential development, which planners argue could yield around 1,400 additional dwellings within 2.5 kilometres of the CBD. Second, whether the strategy mandates an affordable housing contribution from developers, a mechanism several other Victorian councils have adopted but Ballarat has so far declined to formalise.

The Committee for Ballarat has submitted to the review arguing that without a density uplift in established suburbs, the city will keep sprawling south and west, loading infrastructure costs onto future residents and onto state government budgets. The submission points to the 2024 Grattan Institute analysis showing sprawl costs governments between $50,000 and $70,000 per additional dwelling in roads, pipes, and community services.

Residents wanting to shape those outcomes have a narrow window. The council's planning and development committee meets on July 22, with public submissions on the Housing Strategy review closing August 1. Submissions can be lodged through the council's Your Say Ballarat portal or dropped at the Town Hall on Sturt Street. The decisions that come out of that process — density corridors, affordable housing levies, or the absence of both — will be shaping who can afford to live in this city well into the 2040s.