Anyone who’s been house-hunting for more than five minutes has no doubt seen the term “period home” or “period features” listed amongst some homes’ selling points.

It’s an all-inclusive pointer to one of the numerous architecture movements that have defined Australian suburban design over more than 200 years.

But what are those architecture movements and how do you know which one you’re looking at?

Here’s your quick guide to Australia’s residential architecture.

Colonial

Period: 1788-1840

This Georgian-style home is steeped in history dating back to 1887. Picture: realestate.com.au/buy

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A lot can happen in 50 years, and architecture in Australia came a long way in the 50 years after white settlement. Colonial architecture is actually an overarching descriptor for a number of architectural styles that were used through this period, having originated from Britain.

Distinctive and simple, Colonial houses initially reflected a ‘Georgian’ style that was popular in England at the time, with a verandah and a hipped roof. In the prosperous 1820s and ’30s, designs began to see subtle detailing that would become more prevalent in later movements.

Victorian

Period: 1840-1890

A  classic Victorian terrace. Picture: realestate.com.au/buy

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Named for Queen Victoria, who took the throne in 1939, Victorian-style homes are among the most popular of all period properties.

Encompassing a range of architectural features and styles, Victorian homes are generally split into three periods of design. Many early Victorian homes were worker’s cottages and were constructed from exposed or rendered brick, with a pitched roof and a small verandah or no verandah at all.

Mid Victorian homes are categorised as those built between 1860 and the mid-1870s, and they saw an increased use of ornamentation, front verandahs and the polished floorboards that are so desired in today’s market.

Late Victorian architecture took another leap forward in grand statements, with ornate moulding often featured throughout the rooms, along with coloured glass, rendered walls and arches.

Federation/Edwardian

Period: 1890-1915

Federation style has timeless appeal. Picture: realestate.com.au/buy

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Arguably the most easily recognised Australian architectural movement, Edwardian or Federation homes are renowned for their facades, which are usually red brick and feature timber fretwork.

Their steeply sloped roofs were initially mostly galvanized iron, though the use of terracotta tiling became more prominent.

Inter-War

Period: 1918-1938

‘California bungalows’ signified the major shift from Britain-centric design, to the United States as our dominant architectural inspiration during the inter-war period. Picture: Getty

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Australia began to modernise dramatically in the decades after World War I, and our architecture increasingly began to takes its cues from the United States as World War II approached.

Inter-war designs were somewhat simple, with red brick, weatherboard and rendered facades the main feature, with verandahs gradually superceded by porches.

‘California bungalows’ also fit within this period, with the circa 1920s style signifying the major shift from Britain-centric design, to the United States as our dominant architectural inspiration. California bungalows are identifiable as freestanding, single-storey homes that feature a sloping roof, as well as columns supporting the front verandah. Built mostly from brick, they are generally set back from the street on good-sized blocks and usually feature a central hallway.

Art deco design also rose to prominence early in this period and remains popular among Australian buyers, with its iconic rounded edges and use of whites and creams.

Post-War

Period: 1940-1960

Mass-produced materials were key in post-war architecture. Picture: realestate.com.au/buy

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The post-war years were both prosperous and challenging in Australia, with materials scarce but housing demand at fever pitch. Mass-produced materials were key, with most designs centred around single-storey, brick, double- or triple-fronted homes, with brick veneer eventually becoming the brickwork of choice.

Late 20th Century

Period: 1960-70s

Open-plan living became more sought after from the late 20th century. Picture: realestate.com.au/buy

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Homes in the 1960s and ’70s began to take on a more modern look as Australian homes continued to grow in size, while simplifying in their design and decoration at the same time.

Brick veneer homes remained the dominant choice, while open plan living became more widely sought-after.

This article was originally published on
30 May 2018 at 9:00am
but has been regularly updated to keep the information current.

The pay-to-save retail model popularised by Costco is spreading across Australia, with new entrants using memberships to promise cheaper groceries and fuel – and forcing a rethink of how big-box stores and servos plug into local catchments.

In Western Sydney, Grosco – quickly dubbed the “Indian Costco” – has opened in Penrith with the trappings of a warehouse club: bulk packs, a paid entry system and an appeal to families determined to cut the weekly bill.

Launched in March, it carries more than 1000 products in both bulk and standard sizes and targets Australia’s fast‑growing Indian and South Asian communities while still stocking Australian staples.

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Like its US inspiration, Grosco insists its business runs on member fees rather than fat margins.

“Traditional grocery stores mark up products 30–50 per cent. We don’t do that. Grosco runs on razor‑thin margins because we’d rather have thousands of members saving money than charge a few customers inflated prices. The membership fee is what keeps our business running,” a spokesperson said.

Shoppers who joined in launch month paid $79 before the annual fee shifted to $99 from April.

MORE NEWS: Woolies rolls out major change to 700 stores

Grosco claims to save people more than $1000 over the course of a year.

However, the business appears to run monthly membership discount initiatives

The company claims a family spending $100 a week on Indian groceries could save roughly $1200 to $1800 a year versus other Indian grocers – a pitch that’s resonated, with Grosco saying it recruited 800 new mums in May via a Mother’s Day free membership offer.

LMCT+: Adrian Portelli’s subscription playbook

Billionaire entrepreneur Adrian Portelli is also taking a leaf out of Costco’s playbook, expanding his LMCT+ rewards empire into a subscription-based supermarket chain.

The first LMCT+ supermarket is set to open in Melbourne’s western suburbs, integrating grocery and fuel discounts under a single $99 “Everyday Saver” membership.

Members paying the annual fee will gain access to discounts on both groceries and fuel at LMCT+ branded stations, including the flagship location in Preston.

Adrian Portelli says LMCT+ members will get instant access to the supermarkets and higher-tier in-store discounts. Picture: NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

The initial supermarket location is reportedly the IGA in Deer Park, Melbourne, which Portelli appeared to confirm he had acquired.

The revamped IGA already boasts an expanded product range, including a butcher and Tattslotto services, aiming to be a comprehensive one-stop-shop.

Portelli also indicated that his new venture would provide a platform for small Australian businesses to get their products on shelves.

An AI-generated image of how the first LMCT+ supermarket in Melbourne could look.

In a characteristic move, he used the announcement to deliver a colourful rebuke to unnamed rivals, accusing them of copying his strategies.

Beyond groceries and fuel, the LMCT+ platform offers “Mates Rates” and exclusive discounts from over 1,000 partner businesses across various sectors, alongside its highly regarded giveaways of luxury supercars, cash, and real estate.

Kogan First: The digital membership model

Not every membership looks like a shed on an arterial.

Online, Kogan First has become a digital analog to a wholesale club, trading a $129 annual fee (or $14.99 monthly) for member‑only price drops, free shipping and reward credits across electronics, pantry items and everyday essentials.

The company says the program now drives more than 10 per cent of total revenue.

However, it hasn’t been without controversy.

The 14‑day free trial can be pre‑ticked at checkout, and customers who don’t untick it can find themselves rolled onto a paid plan when the trial ends – a reminder to check renewal settings before you buy.

Costco: The established template

The gravitational centre of this trend still belongs to Costco, which set the template locally: a compulsory membership to shop, with two personal tiers – Gold Star at $65 a year and Executive at $130 – each including a free household card for someone at the same address. Executive members get an annual 2 per cent cashback on eligible purchases.

Shannon Hendry shopping with daughters Cleo, 3, and Charlie, 4, at Costco Warehouse in Bundamba. Picture: Tara Croser.

Join online or in‑warehouse, present a non‑transferable card for entry and at checkout, and shop across a global network for 12 months from the primary cardholder’s enrolment date. Business memberships sit at similar price points.

The pay-off is bulk buys and sharp pricing on brand‑name groceries, electronics and clothing, with fuel at many locations, and renewals handled online or in‑store.

The future of membership retail

In a cost‑of‑living crunch, the calculus is straightforward: if you shop often enough – and have the storage – the fees can pay for themselves; if you don’t, the maths unravels quickly.

The competitive ripple effects are real: sharp fuel pricing from a membership operator can pressure nearby servos, while a $99‑a‑month bundle could create micro‑catchments where members default to a single network for both the weekly shop and the tank fill.

All of which brings the story back to Costco’s next act – and why the market’s watching closely.

Bailey Rock fills his car with discounted items he purchased at Costco. Picture: Eleni Tzanos

The retailer has 15 warehouses across the country and is set to add two more next year in Victoria and Western Australia, while actively hunting additional sites in North and South Sydney, Perth and Adelaide.

First‑time entries into Tasmania and Geelong underline a push into new catchments.

If the pioneers of membership retail continue to expand while challengers like Grosco and LMCT+ carve out niches, the pay‑to‑save model won’t just reshape how Australians shop; it will keep redrawing the retail map itself, one oversized box – and bowser – at a time.

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OPINION

“So long, suckers,” says Australia’s smiling assassin.

Walking through my suburb’s lifeless pedestrian mall on the way home from work last night, sidestepping tumbleweeds where small businesses are now shuttering on a near-daily basis, I caught the unmistakeable and very pungent whiff of an ill wind.

Look, I’m not a property analyst, nor am I an economist. I have no financial qualifications and no in-depth legislative or property law knowledge either.

So what do I know? Likely nothing. Only time will tell.

But passing another abruptly vacated commercial premise – a boutique clothing retailer located next to a garish pink matcha store whose curious survival until now does nothing to displace its neon-lit announcement of impending doom – I felt an unmistakeable chill down my hunched and withered Gen X spine.

“Uh oh,” I thought. “While everyone’s been distracted by the latest season of MAFs, the nation’s true unholy union has been breeding like rabbits!”

Another abandoned commercial premise.

These two sloppy desperados – our foreign investment laws and the smiling assassin’s new property IED (improvised explosive device) – now look to be wedded in a bad marriage that is, I suspect, going to be uglier to watch than whatever that nasty-sounding MAFS “fingerbang” episode was all about.

Take my suburb, which has had a commercial property problem for a long time.

I first became interested in the proliferation of empty shopfronts years ago, when I read that a group of locals was trying to persuade the new owner of the little local cinema to lease it to them so it could be reopened and serve the neighbourhood cinephiles. How good!

But the new owner was an overseas investor. She didn’t care at all that the property was gathering dust. She didn’t care that the community was permanently without its cinema. Evidently, she still doesn’t care, because all these years later, the cinema continues to sit empty, abandoned and forlorn since September 2013.

Mind those tumbleweeds!

The question of why an overseas investor would buy such a slice of commercial real estate in Australia, only to point-blank refuse to look for tenants to fill it with something people might actually want or need, is a mystery for the ages.

Another sad looking commercial strip. Generic Blacktown photos.

I’ve long assumed it was evidence of an overexposed loophole for wealthy overseas buyers to get their sticky mitts on the real prize: Australian citizenship, and with it access to the nation’s tempting smorgasbord of prestige residential titles, but I checked the relevant bits of the current legislation and that does not seem to be the case. Apparently we do not have a “citizenship by investment” model.

“Curiouser and curiouser,” said Alice.

But we do have foreign investment aplenty in Australian real estate and nothing says “overseas buyer ghetto” quite like these long stretches of long-term shopfront vacancies, now visible everywhere I go and everywhere I look.

If the loophole to foreign investment is that they have to “buy into an Australian business”, then the hole is, in reality, a gaping maw, an ugly, insatiable Sarlacc slurping up commercial property sales with no intention of holding up the “business” end of the bargain.

You can’t miss the fact that commercial sites are languishing in huge numbers.

I don’t know how many of these empty premises are owned by nonresident and non-citizen investors but I suspect it’s a goodly few. And the last tenants were likely sent broke by the rent and overheads because “small business” is often just a euphemism for a couple of dreamers who watched too many Hugh Grant rom-coms featuring charming, quirky little uber niche businesses where no one makes a penny but the owner still gets to marry the biggest star in Hollywood so that’s all right then.

A young, dreamy, Hugh Grant in the iconic film, Love Actually. Photo: YouTube.

In reality, tenants can’t get their landlord to fix anything or lower the rent because the landlord either can’t afford the repairs or to lower the rent or in many cases really, self-evidently, doesn’t want the bother of an actual business operating on the premises. They just want the empty husk, once the Sarlacc has sucked out all the entrails and picked the bones clean.

Is it a problem, at a time when millions of Australians either can’t afford to buy a home or can’t quite afford the repayments on the home they did buy, that we are so willing to sell off untold amounts of real estate to people who don’t even live here and are not Australian, when their buying power and numbers surely must help drive up both commercial and residential property prices?

If you want a glimpse at the monstrous appetite for offloading Australian interests, the mining industry is currently estimated to be 86 per cent foreign owned! Eighty-six per cent! And that’s just mining – we’ve also blithely sold off whole islands, and farms you need a Cessna to see in full, to overseas interests.

Exactly how much of Australia is no longer even Australian at all?

And one of the things suffocated to death in all this – a silent death, because all its victims generally have no pride, no tears, and no more fight left by the end – has to be the nation’s small businesses, because would-be operators either can’t afford to buy the space, or cannot pay the extortionate rental prices for the lots advertised for rent, and nor are they likely to be able to raise overseas owners of empty commercial spaces whether they’re listed as available or not.

Small businesses struggle as commercial properties rent and mortgages become out of reach. Picture: Alan Barber

But that’s not where this problem ends, is it? It takes two to tango. Enter the smiling assassin’s residential property investment policy, skipping down the aisle to join hands with the foreign investment Sarlacc, with Australians merely the unwilling witnesses forced to watch Jim gleefully put a ring on it.

Because now joining all the For Lease signs in commercial zones at the altar of broken dreams is the alarming overnight proliferation of For Sale signs outside residential properties. And they aren’t selling. Homes in my area that guaranteed would have sold before auction at a premium just a couple of months ago are being passed in and the wilting, overlong display of sale signage out front is as shocking as fiction’s famous scarlet letter, only this one screeches SCREWED.

The combined portrait of inactivity in the market is bracing. This is not a scene of economic confidence or prosperity. People are under the pump.

I can’t help but spare a thought for those small operators, like the ones who woefully misjudged the size of the matcha market, but also the local baristas and the woman with the laundry at the end of the street who probably did a pretty solid trade washing and ironing business shirts pre-Covid. Chances are she has never quite recovered – people iron their own shirts now, and many have already stopped buying coffee too.

Jenkins slams Albo’s First Home Buyers Assistance scheme. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Even the perpetually packed cafe nearest to our place was empty the other morning. Not a soul in the place during their usually brisk breakfast trade. I’ve never seen that before. Not ever.

Add all that to this morning’s revelations that you don’t even need to be an Australian to access the First Home Buyers Assistance scheme and that’s not the smiling assassin and the Sarlacc’s joyously ribboned vintage wedding mobile driving happily through a thronging community of wellwishers, replete in their own good fortune to be living in the Lucky Country.

No, that’s a runaway clown car, careening out of control and kicking up noxious dust through the whisper quiet, boarded up streets of this sad and nameless place, where Australians’ well-earned retirement plans; decades of hard graft to ensure meaningful intergenerational wealth transfer; years of tough slog to try to reach long-term housing security and the spectre of drained savings caused by repeat bill shock, find themselves gathered shivering around this raging bin fire.

Mmmm. I really don’t think that’s confetti the crowds are throwing at the happy couple as they pass by.

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