Burial plot up for sale for $100,000
It turns out Australia's housing crisis extends beyond the grave, as it's now equally expensive to die in Sydney as it is to live.
A graveyard in Sydney has wait lines longer than that of an Eastern Suburbs rental property, with plots at the exclusive Waverley Cemetery now up for sale for up to $100,000.
Eyebrows were raised online when the plot at the cemetery was advertised for sale on Facebook Marketplace, with the ad reading that the plot is “used – like new” and is available “in perpetuity”.
To sweeten the deal, the burial site’s owner states it has “ocean views” and is in a “quiet neighbourhood,” which is no doubt what one must take into consideration your forever home.
Other plots in the same cemetery are also up for sale for a lesser $50,000 and $70,000.
Talking to A Current Affair, Ben Kelly from the Australasian Cemeteries and Crematoria Association, said cost of living pressures, or perhaps cost of dying pressures, were a factor even in the graveyard industry, given the rising cost of cemetery maintenance.
“Waverley Cemetery is a beautiful, historic cemetery with extremely limited capacity left,” Mr Kelly said.
“As the population grows these cemeteries are filling up and they are creating new ones but they are further and further away.
“So when the spots do come available they are obviously of a premium.”
A place in Waverley Cemetery has long been highly sought after, with the heritage listed site boasting impressive Victorian and Edwardian monuments and memorials, as well as ocean views that are... to die for.
While there are definitely some people prepared to fork out the expensive sum for their prime spot in the ground, others weren't so sure.
“It sounds disgraceful to be honest,” one passer-by told ACA, when told of the price of a plot at the graveyard.
“I think that’s ridiculous”.
Competition to get into Waverley Cemetery is so fierce that new plots with perpetual rights are no longer available, with the graveyard instead offering renewable internment rights.
This allows for the burial of human rights for a minimum initial term of 25 years which then has to be renewed, and even then, there's an extensive waitlist.
The extortionate prices after reflected in a 2020 report by the NSW Government, which found some of Sydney’s largest and most well-known public cemeteries were in there “final years” of being able to accommodate new burials and will likely be full by 2032.
Image credits: Facebook / A Current Affair