30,000 New Homes, 15 Years, One Inner West: What ‘Our Fairer Future’ Means for Owners
Council media releases are written to make you feel calm.
The numbers they contain are designed to do the opposite.
The Inner West Council’s “Our Fairer Future” plan talks about 20,000–30,000 additional homes across the area over the next 15 years. The council’s own release later mentions 35,000 potential new homes once the full program is accounted for, including state partnerships.
On the surface, it sounds like a housing crisis finally being taken seriously.
Underneath, it’s a complete re-draw of how parts of the Inner West will look, feel and trade.
Where the Change Is Actually Happening
This isn’t about squeezing a few extra terraces into a quiet Petersham side street.
The plan targets specific corridors and nodes:
Ashfield, Dulwich Hill, Marrickville and the rail/light rail spine – upzoning to mid-rise, with some towers reaching 20+ storeys in proposed scenarios
Parramatta Road corridor – additional 8,000 homes in partnership with the state, turning dead commercial strips into mixed-use residential zones
Council car parks and underutilised sites – earmarked for social and affordable housing
On paper, it’s about supply.
In real life, it’s about gravity.
People, money and attention will follow the new density.
Shops will cluster around it.
Transport demand will grow around it.
Values will respond to it – in different, uneven ways.
Winners, Losers and the Wide Middle
There’s a simplistic narrative that “more supply = lower prices”.
In mature, high-demand areas like the Inner West, that rarely plays out cleanly.
What usually happens:
Well-planned, well-designed new stock near transport lifts the baseline desirability of the area. Older stock nearby often rides that wave.
Poorly executed density – small units on noisy roads with no amenity – drags sentiment, even if prices hold up in the short term.
As an owner, you want to know:
Am I in a future view corridor that will be blocked or framed by new buildings?
Is my street moving from “quiet residential” to “gateway road”?
Will my home be one of the few remaining low-rise houses in an increasingly dense pocket?
Scarcity changes shape as density arrives.
Why This Isn’t a Reason to Panic
The Inner West is not being knocked down and rebuilt.
It’s being layered.
Character suburbs – Petersham, Summer Hill, Stanmore, Leichhardt – still have hard heritage constraints and strong community resistance to careless over-development. Those factors don’t disappear just because a regional housing target is printed in bold.
But pretending nothing will change is just as naïve as assuming everything will.
If you own a house near proposed mid-rise zones, you may be holding a future amalgamation site.
If you own a unit in an older block next to a new station precinct, your building could become the “affordable alternative” that’s suddenly in high demand.
The key is not to react emotionally to the headline number.
It’s to understand precisely where you sit in the new map.
That’s what I do for clients every week:
Translate a 100-page planning document into a simple, honest conversation about this street, this block, this home.
FROM THE DESK OF-
RAMON RANEAL