WHY NOBODY'S SELLING THE FAMILY HOME

There's a quiet little drama playing out in Australian suburbs right now, and almost nobody's talking about it at the BBQ.

The family homes aren't moving.

You know the ones. Three or four bedrooms, a backyard the dog has fully claimed, a kitchen that's hosted twenty years of birthday cakes, and a spot at the front fence where the bins live. Those houses. They used to tick over reliably. Kids grow up, parents retire, "For Sale" sign goes up, next family moves in, life rolls on.

Except, increasingly, that last bit isn't happening. And it's reshaping the market in ways that affect pretty much everyone, whether you're buying, selling, renting, or just someone who's opened realestate.com.au at 11pm "for a quick look."

The American version vs the Aussie version

Over in the US, there's a juicy headline trend. Retirees are actually upsizing. Buying bigger homes, in better school zones, outbidding young families with cash offers and a smile. Brutal stuff if you're house hunting with a pram and a pre approval.

Australia's version is gentler, but the end result is weirdly similar.

Here, older households mostly aren't out there bidding on five bedders. They're just, well, staying. Loving where they live. Knowing every dodgy footpath crack and which neighbour leaves the lemons on the fence. Why would they leave?

So the family homes aren't being snapped up by Boomers. They're simply not being listed in the first place. Same squeeze, different mechanism.

Staying put is the rational move

Let's be honest. Moving house is the worst. It's emotional, it's expensive, and stamp duty in most states is enough to make a saint swear.

If you do the maths on selling the much loved family home, paying tens of thousands in transaction costs, and trying to find a "right sized" place that's actually nicer than what you've already got, a lot of people quite reasonably go, "You know what? The spare room can stay a spare room. Let's go to Italy instead."

Hard to argue with that, really.

Then there's the school catchment thing

Now sprinkle in the other ingredient. School zones.

In a lot of suburbs, the price difference between one side of a catchment line and the other is not a rounding error. It can be hundreds of thousands of dollars. Buyers aren't just buying a house. They're buying a postcode, a school gate, a peer group, a future.

Combine "almost no family homes for sale" with "everyone wants to live in the same eight suburbs because of the schools" and you get a polite Australian stampede. Auctions full of hopeful young families, all chasing the same shrinking pool of homes.

"Downsizers" who aren't really downsizing

Here's a fun twist. A lot of older movers aren't downsizing. They're right sizing. They want one level living. A nice kitchen. A study. A guest room for the grandkids. A garage you can actually get out of without sucking in your stomach.

And, increasingly, they want to live near their adult kids. Not in the granny flat. In their own place, around the corner. Which is lovely. Also, it means one family's "housing need" can quietly turn into two homes in the same nice suburb.

You see where this goes.

So what's actually going on?

The big, boring, important answer is that we're not building the right next step for people who'd happily move if there were somewhere good to move to.

Not everyone wants a high rise apartment. Not everyone wants to leave the suburb they raised their kids in. What's missing is the lovely middle bit. Townhouses, well designed two and three bedders, small boutique blocks with a lift and a balcony big enough for a herb garden, close to the cafés and the train and the GP they've been seeing for fifteen years.

Until that middle layer shows up properly, the family homes will keep not turning over. Listings will stay thin. Prime suburbs will keep doing their prime suburb thing. And buyers will keep elbowing each other politely at Saturday auctions.

The takeaway

If you're trying to buy in a tightly held, leafy, school zoned suburb and it feels harder than it should, it's not you. It's the maths.

And if you're an older homeowner sitting on a beloved family home wondering whether to move? You're not "blocking the market." You're just doing what makes sense given the options on offer.

The fix isn't guilt. It's better choices.