Melbourne's ring road, much like the Boulevard P??riph??rique in Paris, is a multi-lane bitumen barrier between the inner and outer suburbs.
The state government's North East Link plans, revealed this week, will see the ring around Melbourne completed. The new road is set to connect the M80 from Greensborough to the Eastern Freeway.
For those looking to buy in the west and north, the road can play a huge part in deciding where to spend the next 30 mortgage-paying years of their lives.
First-home buyers who want to take advantage of the state government's stamp duty saving on homes under $600,000 may think they need to leave the inner circle to enter the market. But there are still properties to be found inside the ring road for under $600,000.
Current Domain listings showed suburbs including Sunshine West, Ardeer, Glenroy and Reservoir had a healthy number of stock under the magic number.
Real Estate Buyers Agents Association Victorian representative Leigh McConnon said it was all about the type of property first-home buyers were willing to snap up.
He said free-standing houses on large blocks in suburbs such as Fawkner, Glenroy and Reservoir were going for more than $600,000, but there were other options, such as sub-divided blocks.
"It might be 300 to 400 square metres of land where there is a house on it, but obviously doesn't have the big backyard," Mr McConnon said. "Alternatively we'd recommend a single-level villa."
Stockdale and Leggo Glenroy agent Richard Imbesi said though 53 per cent of properties sold in the suburb in the past year were under $600,000, the majority were either units or houses on sub-divided blocks.
"First-home buyers are predominantly looking at two and three bedroom units for that price," Mr Imbesi said. "Anything on a sub-dived block, by all means, you can pick that up for $500,000 to $600,000."
When faced with a choice between a larger property above the ring road and a smaller property within it, Mr McConnon advises first-home buyers to go with the latter.
"The closer that you can get into the CBD the better," he said. "At the end of the day, it's not the amount of land you can buy, it's the value of the land and how that's likely to increase over time."
Mr McConnon said buyers looking outside of the M80 should try to buy close to public transport.
"Within a kilometre radius of a train station, for example, they're likely to be the areas that are going to perform."
In the west, it was more common to find listings and sales under $600,000. Sunshine West had 104 sales in the past year in that price range, and 88 of those had three or more bedrooms.
Douglas Kay Sunshine director Adrian Kay said suburbs such as Ardeer and Sunshine West were still a good foot-in for first-home buyers.
"For $600,000 there's still opportunity in those two particular suburbs to get something on a decent sized piece of land and a decent sort of home," Mr Kay said.
He said the inner-ring suburbs were more popular than nearby Deer Park, which sits just past the M80.
"Buyers want to be within that sort of zoning of the city," Mr Kay said.
Mr McConnon said Sunshine West and Ardeer did not have the gentrification of the north, and therefore were not as expensive for first-home buyers.
"It's not an area that we've been investing a lot of our clients' money in, we're still recommending to them to buy in that north pocket," he said. "They're not going to be buying in the eastern pocket or the bayside pocket because prices are a lot higher."
Heidelberg West, which will be two suburbs in from the new North East Link, was the only suburb in the east with a significant number of listings under $600,000. Other suburbs that had a strong number of sales and listings at the lower end of the market were Bundoora, Pascoe Vale, Sunshine North, Braybrook, Sunshine and Albion.
