Suburb spotlight: Family favourite Beaumont Hills' steady interest
The relatively new suburb of the Hills District, and 40 kilometres north west of Sydney CBD, Beaumont Hills was a formal part of Kellyville until 2002. Characterised by house proud residents, with a number of estates that form part of the McMansion culture, it has been built up in recent times.
Most of the internal streets branch out from Samantha Riley Drive and Brampton Drive, while being bound by Windsor Road, Withers Road and Smalls Creek. It's a postage stamp on the Hills' map, housing just under 8,000 people at the time of the 2011 Census with an average 3.6 people per household.
Within the community, 67% are married and 35.4% are catholic, while 18.2% are anglican.
The median weekly household income is $2,515, more than double the state average of $1,237.
Employment in Beaumont Hills by sector
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census Data 2011
Employment in New South Wales by sector
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census Data 2011
With its own shopping centre with underground carpark, that appeared some years after the suburb's inception, servicing the locals with an IGA, a bakery/coffee shop, a pharmacy and several other necessities, it's also a decent walk away from Rouse Hill Town Centre.
Beaumont Rise, developed in recent years in the space between Rouse Hill and Beaumont Hills, is made up of smaller blocks than the slightly older properties in the Hills.
A quiet, leafy suburb with quirky street names such as Tellicherry Circuit, it's mainly home to younger families - clear by the sheer volume of school bus trips and stops required from any one school, as well as the quick enrolments seen by schools such as Beaumont Hills Public School.
Notably the area's biggest downfall, particularly lamented by older teenagers and early 20-somethings that still live at home, as well as commuters, is its distance from public transport. Many drive to Castle Hill to take a bus into university, or are required to drive to Seven Hills Station to take the train.
Hills Bus connections, as noted by Trip Planner, can take an hour and a half to get from the suburb to Central Station, often using a combination of transport modes. For this reason, many drive and Brampton Drive, the long arterial through the centre of the suburb, is commonly lined with P-plater cars.
A significant proportion, 72.6% in the 2011 Census, noted that they travel to work by car either as a driver or a passenger and most have two or more cars for each household. Congestion along Windsor and Old Windsor Road is notorious.
This is set to change with the North West Rail Link for sometime being said to hold good things for property values across the Hills District, despite the disbelief from some locals that it would ever eventuate.
New stations at Kellyville and Rouse Hill should be easily accessible by Beaumont Hills residents, with the Kellyville station set to have the biggest car park of any of the stations on the North West Rail Link.
With increasing access, it has been predicted that house prices should increase as a result and that there may be an increase in different types of housing stock. Currently, the vast majority of properties are houses with four or more bedrooms, and 67.9% are owned with a mortgage. The median price sits at $720,000, with 6.3% growth over the past year, according to RP Data.
It appears many are looking for brand new homes, with Beaumont Rise Estate, located above Parkway Drive between the suburb and Rouse Hill, being one of the latest to populate. Most of the blocks on these newer estates are smaller offerings, often around the 450 square metre mark.
A currently listing has a 650 square metre block for around $600,000, meanwhile on the other end of the spectrum a six-bedroom five-bathroom home has a price guide of "over $1 million".
However, with the $8.3 billion rail project not set to open until late-2019, it will be interesting to see what will happen to the area in the meantime.