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Australian Conveyancer – August 2026. Words by Sam McKeith

 

Cleared for Takeoff: Airport may send local house prices sky high

There is new hope in Sydney’s west as the region eyes the runway to success later this year

New Western Sydney International (WSI) Airport flight paths will have mixed effects on the city’s property market ahead of the $6 billion facility’s opening, real estate experts say.

New flight paths took effect in July, before full air traffic starts at the landmark western Sydney development in October.

Flight paths are also set to shift at Kingsford Smith and Bankstown airports.

Ahead of the changes, Sydney councils have flagged noise concerns about a swathe of areas stretching from the Blue Mountains to inner southwest suburbs like Campsie, Belfield, Clemton Park, Belmore, Croydon Park, Ashbury and Hurlstone Park.

Nat Gordon, founder of real estate consultancy Propoholic, said it was tough to assess the impact of the new routes given some areas would also see upside from WSI.

“Currently there is uncertainty while the flight paths are still to be finalised, so noise and potential environmental implications cannot be fully assessed,” Gordon told AC.

“In reality, much of the uncertainty has less to do with noise, and more with planning.

“Suburbs that have benefited from rezoning, density changes or clear inclusion into the broader airport precinct are seeing stronger price performance. Those areas have a defined role in the future economy of the region.”

The centrepiece of the 11,000 hectare aerotropolis is Nancy-Bird Walton Airport, but it also includes a new motorway and rail stations. These are set to underpin a new urban hub, Bradfield City, with the NSW government last year injecting $835 million into the precinct to support construction of homes and businesses in the area.

Gordon said areas at risk of missing out on upside of the development were those hit by aircraft noise and not slated for infrastructure upgrades.

She highlighted places like Greendale and Rossmore, which she described as being caught inside the airport’s “geographic footprint” but without significant zoning changes.

“While they saw increased price growth and interest initially when the WSI proposal was confirmed in 2017-18, these suburbs did not sustain momentum when it emerged that they had less direct importance to the aerotropolis infrastructure,” the consultant said.

“Without that planning uplift, they do not capture the same level of buyer demand or investor confidence.”

In the longer term, it was likely that the new airport would buoy property prices, despite the impact of flight paths, according to Gordon.

That is because the new airport would, over time, likely lead to more planning shifts, new transport links, employment hubs and zoning changes being rolled out in the city’s west.

“That typically creates long-term upward pressure on property values across the region,” she said. “Properties that benefit from improved access, connectivity and employment will see stronger growth.”

“Properties directly impacted by flight paths, zoning or environmental factors may experience softer demand relative to their neighbours, usually in the short term.”

Suburbs close to the new airport like Luddenham, Greendale, Silverdale, Wallacia and Kemps Creek are among those to be most heavily impacted by the new flight paths.

In those areas, plane noise is predicted to be so loud that the federal government has urged residents to apply for noise treatment works on their properties.

The July changes applied to air cargo movements ahead of passenger flights starting in October.

Buyers agent Rasti Vaibhav said in suburbs affected by flight paths, property prices would likely follow similar trends to those in other parts of Australia.

As a guide, Vaibhav, the founder of Get Rare Properties, pointed to suburbs around Brisbane’s second runway, Melbourne Airport and Perth Airport.

“Flight path suburbs and aerotropolis-adjacent suburbs move in opposite directions – the gap is bigger than most buyers realise,” he said.

“The market is already pricing the airport in, but unevenly across the catchment, with national precedent showing the biggest price moves happen 18 months either side of opening, not after,” he added.

Suburbs most exposed to WSI flight paths would see a “big devaluation”, while those positioned close to new infrastructure would gain.

He pointed to the “noise contour rule” as the best guide to separating winners from losers.

Noise contours are map-based lines showing predicted aircraft noise exposure on an airport’s flight paths, and used to generate an “ANEC” – a cumulative noise measure.

Government forecasts show the highest ANECs in Badgerys Creek, near the airport’s centre.

Austin Buyers Agents founder Luke Bindley agreed that close-by suburbs would suffer. “Badgerys Creek, Londonderry, Bringelly, Greendale, those areas are right next to the airport so you’re going to have noise whether they’re under a flight path or not,” he said.

“They have earmarked significant noise for Mount Druitt, Penrith and St Marys as well.”

However, Bindley cautioned against focusing too much on flight paths, saying they were not a deal breaker for most buyers in Sydney’s fast-growing west.

“I live in western Sydney and I’m told that we’re not in a flight path but every single day I see more planes than the previous day,” Bindley said.

“It’s definitely a conversation you can have with people but it’s never been something where they’ve said ‘I’m not going to buy’.”

To this end, he said parts of Sydney’s inner west, such as Leichhardt, had been under Kingsford Smith Airport’s flight paths for years without a big impact on prices.

Indeed, experts have previously told AC of difficulties in forecasting the impact of aircraft noise on suburbs, and house prices, in Sydney’s west until the airport opens.

The best strategy for buyers and sellers is to hit on a “sweet spot” between airport proximity, enabling convenience and noise intrusion from planes, they said.

Nadine Connell, founder of commercial property brokerage Smart Business Plans, said the airport was having a positive impact on nearby commercial property.

“While most respondents will likely point you to the residential suburbs hardest hit by flight noise, the bigger structural property story is the inverse: the same flight corridors that depress residential prices are where commercial property values are accelerating fastest,” Connell said.

“Industrial property activity wants to be on flight paths. Twenty-four-hour airport operations, runway proximity, and freight connectivity define the aerotropolis precinct’s purpose,” she added.

Connell said this would be accompanied by up to 200,000 jobs, underpinning residential property prices in the wider region “even as the immediate flight-path pockets soften”.

From a commercial finance perspective, she said enquiries for owner-occupier industrial finance in aerotropolis-adjacent corridors have shifted from “speculative to active” over the past 18 months.

Even so, Propoholic’s Gordon warned that the aerotropolis would not “create a single outcome”, making predictions tricky.

Rather, she said it was better to consider how the precinct could “reshape the hierarchy of suburbs within a region”.

“The key drivers here will be planning and zoning outcomes, access to employment and transport, and how buyer perception evolves over time,” Gordon said.

“In my experience, projects of this scale tend to amplify underlying fundamentals rather than completely change them.

“So, while there will be winners and underperformers at a micro level, the broader direction for western Sydney is one of growth, driven by investment, connectivity and long-term economic expansion.”