jgibson3202

I've lived here for over 10 years and I can't imagine living anywhere else.

Great shopping, great transport, close to everything, great schools!!

I can't understate how great the schooling in Cheltenham is. The highschool has a great reputation for discipline and quality of teaching.. And best of all there are no less than 5 primary schools to chose from - all zoned with each other (Cheltenham East, Cheltenham, LePage, KingstonHeath, OurLadyOfTheAssumption). Where else can you get that kind of choice in education!!! Let alone being central to many private schools.

About 10 years ago there were some problems with hoons around some of the streets, particularly the north end of cavanagh street, but the suburb has changed dramatically since then. There is virtually no low-income housing any more, and virtually all of the housing commission homes have been sold to private owners now. So there's a lot of confident renewal and investment.

The well-renovated houses are now fetching prices close to (and sometimes over) $1mil, so it's a suburb you can safely invest in.

There is no noticeable airport noise near cheltenham, which seems to be the only thing which keeps the prices down (fear of airport noise), so the place represents amazing value.

Southland gives a lot of good shopping options for everyday stuff, and Chadstone is a short drive away.

I recently sold my property in The Heath. I agree with most of the comments by sammyj, but wanted to add a few things -

Parking really can be a problem, especially if somebody has a party then there is nowhere for the extra 10 cars except blocking me in.

The airport noise is tolerable inside, but makes it impossible to relax outside in my courtyard. Also being so close to the neighbours means I hear everything all the time.

But the main reasons I left were -

The house turned in to a sauna in Summer and the air-conditioning cannot keep up, and to make things worse the estate has regulations which make it illegal to install shutters or blinds. We eventually decided to install dark tinting on the windows, which made it very dark inside but bearable during summer. We removed the tinting before selling though, as it made the place look dark and depressing.

We had some hairline cracks in our brickwork, which grew larger over a period of months and then caused brickwork to collapse. It uncovered significant movement in the frame. It cost us a fortune to repair the frame and then re-brick. We had lots of other quality problems. The house does seem to be very quickly slapped together. The builder told me the industry term for this is "jerry-built".

If you are seriously thinking of buying one of these places, and see any hairline cracks in the brickwork - then run away!

We were initially sucked in by the beautiful streetscapes and modern fittings, but we became disappointed very quickly.

Finally - another major factor in why we sold is that we are worried the values will fall dramatically. The estate looks beautiful now, but what happens in 10 years from now when they are out-of-style, look dated, and are in need of serious renovation. Worst of all - they are on tiny awkward sized blocks which make it extremely difficult to rebuild anything except the original design. If that size of land is only worth around $150k-$200k now, then people are paying a huge premium for the physical houses right now.