If you are exploring a Rockingham to Mandurah property investment because the price of Perth’s western suburbs left you reeling, you are not alone. Rapid growth has pushed prices to levels similar to Sydney and Melbourne.
As sure as a wave moves across the water, more buyers are turning their attention to the north, east and south. Furthermore, we love the South for many reasons. In particular, the coast around Rockingham and Mandurah.
We aren’t the only ones – population growth has been impressive in the region lately, and it’s forecast to continue.
With so much political noise around right now, thinking is hard. Seeing past this month is tricky, let alone a year or a decade. But now is the time to think long term. Author Ayn Rand said it well: “The longer the range, the better the mind.”
Smart buyers think long term, decades long, and lead with logic, not hype. They look past short-term headlines, current interest rates and surface-level upgrades. They look at the fundamentals.
Population growth. Jobs. Transport. Amenity. Supply and demand.
When you get those right, capital growth tends to follow. Naturally, it is slower thinking than chasing the next hot suburb. It is also the thinking that holds up over decades.
Right now, we believe the coast south of Perth is lining those fundamentals up better than almost anywhere in the nation. When you visit, it feels like a lot is going on.
So we counted. 42 projects. Several massive in size, some smaller. Funded, under construction, or firmly on the drawing board.
Here is what they mean for buyers.
TRANSPORT:
Transport does the quiet heavy lifting. When it gets faster to move between where people live and where they work, the land in between gets more valuable.
The headline is rail.
The new Thornlie to Cockburn Line opened in June 2025. It gives the southern suburbs their first cross-city link without funnelling everyone through the CBD.
Lakelands Station has served the fast-growing southern end of the Mandurah line since 2023.
Planners have also proposed a Karnup Station further south, though state authorities have not yet confirmed or funded it.
Riding those lines is a fleet of new C-series railcars, in service on the Mandurah line since 2024. Additionally, a network-wide High Capacity Signalling upgrade lets trains run more often.
More frequent, higher-capacity trains to Mandurah are the kind of quiet fundamental that lifts values along the whole line.
The roads are moving too.
– Kwinana Freeway Upgrade widens the corridor Baldivis and Rockingham commuters rely on, with construction from 2027.
– Tonkin Highway Extension and Thomas Road Upgrade is a billion-dollar build, already underway and due for completion in late 2028.
– Anketell Road Upgrade, funded in 2026, builds the freight spine into the region’s industrial future.
– Mandurah Estuary Bridge duplication opened a second bridge in early 2026.
– A new acceleration lane at Anstey Road and Mandurah Road is planned for Secret Harbour.
– New traffic signals at Baldivis Road and Kulija Road are funded.
– The Pinjarra Heavy Haulage Deviation will take heavy vehicles out of the town centre.
Individually, each fix is modest. Together, however, they tell you where the congestion and the growth is heading.
LOGISTICS:
Westport is the once-in-a-century project
The biggest project on the horizon is Westport.
It is the state’s plan to build a new container port at Kwinana in Cockburn Sound, eventually replacing Fremantle’s inner harbour. The first new metropolitan container port in WA in more than a century.
The program is worth around $7.2 billion. State leaders established a dedicated Westport Authority in 2026 to drive it. Feeding it will be a package of Westport freight-rail upgrades to move more containers by rail and fewer by truck.
One note of realism, because we would rather you heard it from us.
However, Westport is still in the planning and approvals stages. Its timeline is contested. The official line is ready by the late 2030s. Critics argue later.
It is not a reason to buy tomorrow expecting a payoff next year. But it is a generational signal about where the state sees its freight future. And that future is anchored on this coast.
DEFENCE:
Defence has been in the area for a long time, but it’s growing. It is quietly becoming the region’s anchor tenant.
If Westport is the long game, defence is the here and now.
The AUKUS agreement is turning this coast into some of the most strategically important ground in the country.
At HMAS Stirling on Garden Island, off Rockingham, contractors are spending up to $8 billion to base rotational US and UK submarines from 2027.
Just up the coast, contractors are building out the Henderson Defence Precinct as a naval shipbuilding and sustainment hub. The program is estimated at roughly $25 billion over the decade. A strategic shipbuilder agreement is already signed, with landing craft and later frigates on the way.
It sits alongside the established Australian Marine Complex, the state’s heavy-engineering and shipbuilding site, now transitioning to host the defence work.
For a buyer, the value sits in the people these projects bring.
Tens of thousands of well-paid, secure, long-duration jobs. Because of this, these projects will fill local rentals and create a deep pool of recession-resistant tenants and buyers for decades.
It is telling that Rockingham’s newly approved City Centre Plan now includes a Defence Innovation and Education Hub built around this growth.
HOSPITALS
Health and education follow the people
Services follow population. When they arrive, they make an area easier to live in, which draws more people again.
The corridor is seeing both.
The biggest story is health. A brand-new Peel hospital is planned on a greenfields site next to the existing Peel Health Campus in Mandurah. It is funded from the state’s $1.5 billion Building Hospitals Fund, with construction slated to begin in 2026.
At Rockingham General Hospital, crews are preparing to construct a new mental health emergency facility.
The region is opening new primary schools to support the growing number of young families. Wellard East Primary School opens in 2026. Sunrise Primary School at Wellard follows in 2028. More are planned as suburbs like Karnup fill out.
A hospital and a school do the same thing for a housing market. They anchor demand, and they hold it.
LIFESTYLE
Lifestyle is a fundamental too
A major driver for Rockingham to Mandurah property investment is the coastal lifestyle. Councils are investing hard in the amenity that makes people stay.
– The new Baldivis Sports Complex, a 20-hectare multi-sport hub, opened in late 2025.
– The Aqua Jetty Stage Two expansion at Warnbro is in detailed design.
– Kwinana’s Recquatic redevelopment and City Centre upgrade is funded and moving.
– The Mandurah Eastern Foreshore renewal is under construction.
– Authorities are delivering the broader Transform Mandurah waterfront program in stages
– Rockingham’s capital program is funding new foreshore and community facilities, including a new building at Safety Bay.
While this spending doesn’t always make national headlines, it builds strong communities. It makes suburbs. And it is flowing into this corridor at pace.
JOBS:
Where the jobs and the energy are being made
A property market needs an economy underneath it.
The Western Trade Coast, the industrial belt through Kwinana and Rockingham, is one of the biggest concentrations of industry and jobs in WA. It is also becoming a centre of the energy transition.
– The Kwinana Big Battery is operating and expanded.
– Two waste-to-energy plants, Kwinana (Avertas) and East Rockingham, are up and running.
– The Alcoa Pinjarra alumina refinery keeps investing in its future.
– The Covalent Lithium refinery at Kwinana is producing battery-grade lithium for the global market.
– Western Power’s transmission build-out includes a strengthening of the Kwinana network.
– Developers are preparing the industrial land itself across the Latitude 32 and Rockingham industry zones and the Peel Business Park at Nambeelup.
More employers means more local jobs. More local jobs means more people who need somewhere nearby to live.
MASTER PLANS:
New communities taking shape
In places, the region is not just being upgraded. It is being built from scratch, in a planned and deliberate way.
The Rockingham City Centre Plan, approved in early 2026, sets out a 534-hectare vision to grow the city centre toward 30,000 residents.
The Karnup growth precinct is being master-planned as a whole new town.
Two waterfront tourism projects are in motion. A new Rockingham marina is in early planning. Local council rezoning is driving the Mandurah Ocean Marina redevelopment forward.
And the established growth engines keep turning. From the master-planned coastal community at Golden Bay to the fast-selling estates of Baldivis, one of Perth’s busiest land markets.
SUMMARY:
What it means if you are buying
Forty-two projects is a lot to take in. No single one of them should be the reason you buy.
Some are done and adding value today. Some are years away and carry real timing risk. Westport is the obvious one to keep in perspective.
The point is not any one project. It is the weight of all of them pointing the same way.
More people. More jobs. Better transport. Better services. Better amenity. Concentrated on one stretch of coast, over a sustained period.
That is what strong fundamentals look like.
It is also why the coast south of Perth is a region serious buyers and investors should be watching closely in 2026 and beyond.
Working out where these projects sit relative to specific suburbs, which pockets are best placed to benefit, and how to find the best value amidst all this growth is exactly what we do.
