Canberra - Post Report Question and Answers
What is your housing like? What are typical housing sizes, locations, and commute times for expatriates?
Housing is mostly suburban SFH with some apartments available. What "Urban" living there is, is that of a pop. 350k city built in the country. Suburban housing has a smaller footprint than new US builds. Houses are poorly-insulated for winters here, built using the same tech as in Queensland and in my opinion, almost criminally energy-inefficient. Pack sweaters and a hot water bottle. Nice yards, gardening is a fun perk for this expat after other posts. Top drive time border to border in the ACT is 30 minutes. Average drive time to anything is 15 minutes. "Traffic" is a two minute wait at the stop light in the morning. - May 2023
We had an AMAZING house - a little older, but big and with an enormous yard (sometime a curse, but mostly a blessing). We could get into the City (such as it is) in about 10 minutes. Traffic is very, very light compared to any of the cities we've lived in (DC, Toronto, Kinshasa - even Charlotte, NC). For our mission the housing was not at all centrally located - people lived in newer houses in the "Northside" (north of the manmade Lake Burley Griffin) and people lived in the Southside in older houses with slower internet, but closer to the Embassies and downtown. Some people loved being in the North, others complained endlessly about the longer "commute." - Aug 2020
Mostly single family houses, I drive about 25 minutes to the Embassy housing area. - May 2012
Mostly single family homes. The availability of apts is very limited, especially in the desirable sections of town. This is a driving city and public transport is impractical. Commute times are generally reasponable. My guess is 15 minutes is the average, but traffic is getting worse as the city grows. Commute times go up if you have to cross the lake as the bridges are bottlenecks. - May 2011
Very few apartments, lots of big houses. - Dec 2010
Most have single-family dwellings with 4 bedrooms/2baths. Canberra is not that big, so even if one lives in the outer suburbs, the commute is 30 minutes max. Tne average commute would be 15-20 minutes. - Nov 2010
Most people are in single-family houses spread out all across ACT, some even live just inside New South Wales (NSW). My commute was usually 20 minutes. Singles were usually in small bungalow houses or apartments. - Apr 2010
Our housing is very nice (GleanEagles Kambah). - Oct 2009
The housing market is very tight here. Embassy is mostly putting new families on the North end of town where there is new development. The commute to the Embassy is 15-20 minutes by car and there is no public bus where we live. - Apr 2009
