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Western Australia’s peak real estate body has thrown its support behind a change to planning rules
Hayden Groves, deputy president of the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia, said the City of Fremantle’s support for a ‘tiny house’ initiative is a positive outcome for infill development in Perth’s suburban areas.
The proposal is designed to facilitate the construction of tiny houses, regardless of residential density coding, according to Mr Groves.
Mr Groves said the tiny house initiative would help Perth’s ageing population stay in the family home for longer.
He also said the initiative would improve housing affordability and slow urban sprawl.
“This initiative from the City of Fremantle makes them, in my opinion, the leader of well-conceived infill planning policies amongst comparable local governments and beats carte blanche density increases in established urban areas,” he said.
Notwithstanding concessions available under the residential design codes, land zoned R25 is not able to support multiple dwellings unless the lot is larger than 700 square metres, according to Mr Groves.
“Using this example, it is often perfectly appropriate to have a secondary dwelling on a lot of, say, 650 square metres, yet the current zoning would not allow it,” he said.
The rules around this policy include a provision for a maximum of one car bay for the new dwelling, that 10 per cent of the site needs to be deep root-planted and that the new dwelling cannot be larger than 120 square metres.
“These are all sensible provisions and 120 square metres is hardly tiny,” Mr Groves added.
[Related: East coast agents urged to learn tough west coast lessons]
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