Curtin, ACT 2605Home loan and property guide

Curtin location and character

Curtin lies in the northern part of Woden Valley, the first satellite district to be built separately from Canberra Central. The National Capital Development Commission planned ten suburbs for the district to house approximately 55,000 residents, and construction commenced on Hughes and Curtin in late 1962. The district was officially gazetted on 12 May 1966.

The suburb is named after John Curtin, Australian Prime Minister between 1941 and 1945. Like the rest of Woden Valley, it was laid out to the planning conventions of the early 1960s, with a group centre, generous blocks and substantial street tree planting now sixty years mature.

Curtin has one of the larger group centres in the valley, which gives it a local commercial focus that several neighbouring suburbs lack.

Transport and amenity in Curtin

Canberra's light rail does not serve Woden Valley, so public transport here is the Transport Canberra bus network, with services connecting Curtin to the Woden Town Centre interchange and on to the city.

Road access is by the arterials built with the district. Hindmarsh Drive opened in December 1966, connecting Woden with Fyshwick and South Canberra, and Yarra Glen opened in November 1967, linking Woden to central Canberra. Curtin sits close to both, so journeys to the city and to Woden are short.

The Curtin group centre provides shopping and services, the Woden Town Centre with Westfield Woden is a short distance south, and the Canberra Hospital is nearby in Garran. This guide does not describe school catchments, which the ACT Education Directorate can confirm.

Housing stock in Curtin

Curtin is built of detached houses from the 1960s onward on the generous blocks typical of early Woden Valley, with a modest apartment and townhouse component added around the group centre.

At the 2021 Census, 1,696 of the 2,023 occupied private dwellings were separate houses, 229 were flats or apartments and 99 were semi-detached or townhouse dwellings, so houses made up 83.8 per cent of occupied homes against 72.3 per cent nationally. Three-bedroom homes numbered 750 and four-bedroom homes 746, with 193 having five or more.

The Census also recorded 116 unoccupied private dwellings out of 2,138 on Census night. Inspections on 1960s Canberra housing commonly consider roof and ceiling condition, original wiring and plumbing, window and insulation performance given the cold winters, and asbestos-containing materials, which are addressed further below.

Who lives and buys in Curtin

The 2021 Census counted 5,569 residents in Curtin, with a median age of 41 against 38 for Australia and an average household size of 2.6 people compared with 2.5 nationally. Children aged 5 to 14 were the largest group at 810, followed by 783 adults aged 35 to 44, 780 aged 45 to 54 and 682 aged 55 to 64.

Outright ownership leads. The Census recorded 816 dwellings owned outright, 675 owned with a mortgage and 488 rented, so 40.7 per cent of households with a stated tenure owned outright, 33.7 per cent held a mortgage and 24.4 per cent rented, against 31.0, 35.0 and 30.6 per cent nationally.

Median weekly household income was $2,886 against $1,746, median monthly mortgage repayments were $2,600 against $1,863 and median weekly rent was $450 against $375. For a buyer, this is an established, comparatively affluent family market where a detached house on a large block is the mainstream product.

Leasehold title and planning in Curtin

Land in the ACT is not freehold. It is granted under a Crown lease, and most residential Crown leases run for 99 years, with a buyer taking on the remaining term. Every Crown lease contains a purpose clause specifying the permitted use of the land, which in practice defines what can be built on it.

Varying that purpose clause, most commonly to permit higher density, requires permission from the Territory Planning Authority and attracts the Lease Variation Charge on the resulting uplift in value. A further lease can be applied for at any time during the term, for an administrative fee rather than a payment for the land.

For a buyer, the practical steps are to read the purpose clause on the Crown lease attached to the contract, confirm that the existing use and any proposed use are permitted, and treat redevelopment potential as something to verify rather than assume. Development is otherwise controlled by the Territory Plan.

Buying in Curtin under ACT contract law

The ACT has the most demanding seller disclosure regime in Australia, which is the opposite of the position in Western Australia. Under the Civil Law (Sale of Residential Property) Act 2003, a seller must attach a required set of documents to the contract before the property is advertised.

Those documents include building and compliance inspection reports, from an inspection carried out not earlier than three months before the property was first advertised or offered for sale, building conveyancing inquiry documents, an energy efficiency rating statement, copies of all interests and encumbrances registered against the title, an extract of the title, and the Crown lease and deposited plan. A buyer therefore receives a building report before making an offer rather than commissioning one afterwards.

A buyer is entitled to a cooling-off period of five business days, ending at 5pm on the fifth working day after it begins. Withdrawing during that period costs the buyer 0.25 per cent of the purchase price, forfeited to the seller.

Home loan considerations for Curtin property

Leasehold title is accepted by lenders as security in the ACT and is the normal position across the Territory, so it does not restrict lending in the way an unusual tenure elsewhere would. What matters is the purpose clause and the remaining term, both of which appear in the contract documents.

Loose-fill asbestos insulation deserves particular attention in Curtin. Between 1968 and 1978 the Canberra company D. Jansen and Co, later trading as Asbestosfluf Insulations and known since the 1990s as Mr Fluffy, blew loose-fill amphibole asbestos into the roof spaces of Canberra homes. In 2015 the ACT Government released a list of 1,022 affected properties, and the contamination was concentrated in certain suburbs, Curtin among them.

A Commonwealth audit in 1988 identified most affected homes and a clean-up between 1989 and 1993 addressed about 1,040 of them, but residue remained in some and others were missed, which is why the 2014 eradication scheme bought back and demolished affected houses from July 2015, selling the cleared blocks for redevelopment. Buyers should check the Affected Residential Premises Register for a specific address and read the asbestos information in the contract documents. Insurers and lenders treat a known affected property differently, so this is worth establishing before making an offer.

Lending considerations for Curtin

• Loose-fill asbestos insulation was concentrated in Curtin, so the register should be checked for any address.
• Title is a Crown lease with a purpose clause, not freehold, so permitted use must be confirmed.
• Varying a lease purpose clause attracts the Lease Variation Charge on the uplift.
• Median monthly mortgage repayments of $2,600 mean serviceability usually binds before deposit.
• 1960s stock raises roof, wiring, insulation and asbestos questions on inspection.

Lender policy differs between institutions and changes over time. The guide to Australian lenders explains how credit policy varies, and the home loan guide sets out the main loan structures.