Swan — LGA Conditions Intelligence

Swan is Western Australia’s largest net internal migration absorber and carries one of the largest four-year totals found anywhere in this series — +13,117 over the four years to 2024-25 (53,449 arrivals against 40,332 departures). What sets it apart from every other Structural Absorber card built so far is the shape: no 2021-22 COVID-era spike followed by a fade. Net internal migration held in a narrow band throughout — +3,100, +3,464, +3,112, +3,441 — never peaking early and never trending down. Arrivals eased modestly from a high base (14,018 → 13,231, -5.6%) while departures fell by a similar proportion (10,918 → 9,790, -10.3%), so the near-flat net figure reflects genuine stability, not two offsetting trends.

Swan’s four growth phases are the most even found in this series: Boom +27.5%, Stall +27.9%, Recovery +16.1%, Current +17.9% — every phase strong double-digit growth, with none of the dramatic swings seen elsewhere (Camden, by contrast, ranges from +22.0% to +49.6% across its four phases). The gradual phase-level slowdown (28% down to 16-18%) is largely a base effect — ERP has more than doubled since 2001 (83,797 → 187,090, +123%), so the same absolute intake now represents a smaller percentage — consistent with the flat absolute migration figures in Section 1 rather than a genuine deceleration in demand.

Combined population change in 2024-25 (3,441 internal + 1,706 natural + 2,047 overseas = 7,194 persons, ≈2,998 implied households at 2.4 persons/household) exceeds the 2,108 dwelling approvals recorded the same year by roughly 890 households. Swan’s 2,108 approvals are the largest raw count of any LGA built in this series so far — larger than Camden’s 1,601 — yet the absolute supply-demand gap here is still larger than Camden’s, because the scale of demand is larger still. The population-components reconciliation checks exact: 13,117 (internal) + 6,498 (natural increase) + 8,786 (overseas) = 28,401, matching the ERP change (158,689 → 187,090, 2021 → 2025) to the last person.

The Census unoccupied dwelling rate counts dwellings recorded as unoccupied on Census night — it is not a market vacancy rate; at 6.7% it sits mid-range for this series. Swan’s 53.9% mortgage-holding share is a new series high (ahead of Camden’s 52.7%), consistent with a large, established outer-suburban growth corridor of home-buying families rather than a new-release fringe estate. Unlike Camden, the ACT, Darwin or Yarra — all of which carry above-average SEIFA deciles — Swan’s IRSD/IRSAD decile of 7/7 and its 11.2% high-income share (below every other card built so far) mark it as this series’ first genuinely “middle Australia” growth corridor: strong family formation and steady demand without a premium demographic profile.

• Bedrock figure is population-weighted, not a simple average of suburbs. Readings are on APN Bedrock™ methodology v1.1. Swan’s population-eligible localities (130,887 residents across 33 localities) produce a population-weighted mean of 50.1 on node 24110. A simple, unweighted average gives 51.7 instead — a small 1.6-point gap. At 0.15σ above the national population-weighted mean, this is among the closest-to-average Bedrock readings in this series, alongside Hobart (0.09σ above) and Blacktown (0.13σ below); Swan’s near-average score is notable given its scale. This card uses the population-weighted figure, consistent with the platform’s existing LGA-rollup convention.
• Classification badge is indicative. “Structural Absorber, Sustained at Scale” reflects both the qualitative pattern (departures roughly tracking arrivals down, net staying essentially flat) and the four-year stability found nowhere else in this series’ absorber cards. The platform’s formal 4-way classification query has not been ratified.
• No crime/safety data included in this version. APN Sentinel™ crime-pillar data (node 24121/24122) exists at suburb grain nationally but carries open, jurisdiction-specific data-quality caveats not yet resolved platform-wide — deliberately excluded from this card rather than presented with unresolved caveats attached.
• Demographic profile is 2021 Census vintage. Given Swan’s ERP has grown a further ~18% since 2021 at a broadly steady rate, the 2021 figures likely understate current population and household counts proportionally, without a strong reason to expect the demographic mix itself (income, tenure, age structure) has shifted materially given the flat migration pattern.
• Card format approved 19 August 2026; the Bedrock population-weighting convention used above was adopted platform-wide in October 2026.