The WSM region must act to address the complex housing challenges as a core focus, to ensure future regional growth and prosperity.
The Housing Blueprint
We project a 1.9% regional population growth over the next 15 years, highlighting a need for innovative housing and regional infrastructure solutions to support this growth target.
This report is a valuable step forward in addressing the region’s housing crisis.
WHIP driving new housing development
Community-owned companies established in a range of Wimmera Southern Mallee towns are successfully working to boost housing stock and to reduce the region’s rental housing crisis. Across the towns of Murtoa, Minyip, Donald and Apsley, special purpose vehicle companies of Wimmera Housing Innovations Pty Ltd (WHIP) have commenced work on the construction of 13 new homes. These houses are being funded through local community shareholders and support from the State Government’s Regional Worker Accommodation Fund.
WHIP was established by Wimmera Southern Mallee Development to facilitate community and employer led housing ventures in the region.
Housing availability is acknowledged as one of the biggest constraints to attracting workforce and population to our region. WHIP’s project in the four towns is helping to address the challenge. WHIP is also working on short-term accommodation redevelopment projects in Warracknabeal and Dimboola, where there is clear demand to house healthcare and other essential workers and their families.
Together, we are delivering more than homes — we are unlocking opportunities for great communities to realise their own aspirations.
By working hand-in-hand with communities across Hindmarsh, Yarriambiack, West Wimmera, and Buloke Shires, WHIP is putting bricks, mortar, and momentum on the ground where it’s needed most, to create lasting benefits for residents, employers, and the region’s future.
Analysing WSM’s existing housing stock
- The Hot Property – Resilient Housing Audit assessed housing resilience in five small Wimmera Southern Mallee towns: Minyip, Rainbow, Berriwillock, Pimpinio and Goroke. These towns have small, ageing populations, low household incomes, predominantly detached dwellings, and very limited formal rental housing. Most are among Victoria’s most socio-economically disadvantaged communities.
- Housing stock is largely older weatherboard construction, poorly insulated and unsuited to projected climate conditions to 2040. Climate science indicates the region will become progressively hotter and drier, with more extreme heat days, reduced rainfall, fewer cold and frost days, and greater climate variability, including storms and fire risk.
- Between 63% and 76% of occupied dwellings in the five towns could benefit from climate-resilience renovations such as insulation, draught sealing, selective double glazing, solar panels, water tanks, and heating and cooling upgrades. However, most dwellings are not suitable or affordable to upgrade to best-practice “passive house” standards. Total renovation costs across the five towns are estimated at $29.3 million, rising to more than $400 million if scaled across the wider WSM region.
- Low property values (generally under $250,000) mean renovation costs are unlikely to be recovered, limiting private investment. While smaller dwellings are needed, downsizing options are constrained by the poor condition and economic viability of existing housing stock.
Hot Property was funded by Agriculture Victoria through the Future Drought Fund
Read the full report HOT PROPERTY -Report 1027 Hot Property WSM
The story behind WSM house prices – Feb 2026
House prices in parts of the Wimmera Southern Mallee have risen sharply over the past 12 months. That is the headline coming out of Domain’s latest House Price Report, reported in The Age earlier this month. Horsham, Yarriambiack and Northern Grampians all recorded double-digit growth over the year to December 2025.
It is important to be clear about what this data is, and what it is not. It reflects a single 12-month period. It captures market movement, not long-term outcomes. And it does not, on its own, explain why prices are moving……
Wimmera Housing Innovations in the Media
Read the full article here
What it does tell us is something more fundamental. Demand is showing up in regional Victoria, including in the Wimmera Southern Mallee. People are moving for work. Investors are active. Employers across agriculture, health, renewables, manufacturing and mining are hiring. That combination matters.
Growth of this kind is not accidental. It follows two decades in which agriculture in this region has continued to grow, modernise and lift productivity. That remains the backbone of the Wimmera Southern Mallee economy and will continue to be. What has changed is that other industries are now playing smaller but increasingly important supporting roles. Together, they are making the region more economically active and more visible to people looking for opportunity.
That growth brings benefits. More jobs. More choice for school leavers. More reasons for people to stay or move here. A broader economic base that supports services, infrastructure and community life.
It also brings pressure. Rising house prices are not a badge of honour. They are a sign that supply is lagging demand. For first home buyers, renters and key workers, that pressure is real and immediate. If growth is left to run on its own, the unintended consequences land hardest on locals.
This is where planning matters.
The WSM Housing Blueprint and the establishment of the Wimmera Housing Investment Partnership were developed to respond to exactly this kind of moment. Not to drive price growth, and certainly not to claim credit for market movements, but to shape how the region absorbs demand when it arrives.
It is wrong to suggest WHIP has any impact on house prices rises. Market forces are much bigger than any single initiative. WHIP’s role is modest and still emerging. Its value lies elsewhere. It gives the region a locally controlled mechanism to increase supply, diversify housing options and intervene deliberately rather than react after the damage is done.
The alternative is familiar to many regional communities. Rapid growth followed by stress. Shortages that turn into affordability crises. Boom conditions that leave long-term scars when the cycle turns. Many rural regional communities are familiar with the bust aftermaths.
The real measure of success is not whether prices rise, but whether growth improves living standards. Whether young people can see a future locally.
Whether workers can find housing close to jobs. Whether agriculture continues to thrive while other industries strengthen the economy around it.
Growth is the outcome we want for the Wimmera Southern Mallee. Growth brings opportunity. Growth can also be hard. The difference is whether it is shaped or left to chance.
That is the work ahead. The data tells us change is underway. Our task now is to stay ahead of it.
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