Cost of living crisis: The impact of house pricing on staff retention in racing

Cover image courtesy of Magic Millions

The national average house price in Australia increased 12% in 2025, and subsequently, on Tuesday, the Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate to 3.85%, the first increase since November 2023, to attempt to slow the growth.

In our second piece discussing innovations around the cost of staff in the racing industry, TTR talks about solutions to the cost of housing, one of many price pressures impacting the viability of training and stud farm businesses.

The impact of cost of living rises on staff

Across our industry, much of our workforce, in stables and on farms, work for minimal wages with long hours. As house prices continue to rise, it makes it harder for staff to find accommodation near their workplace, especially for city stable hands, while in towns like Scone, there are less and less affordable options for stud farms to acquire to lease to staff or for staff to rent for the yearling season and beyond.

“Everyone knows the cost of living is a changing landscape in staffing for many industries, but especially racing. That rent rise, the utility rise, and the rise of everything puts pressure on the wage demographic that most stable staff fall into. For a solid decade at least, racing has struggled for staff and it’s becoming increasingly challenging,” said trainer Mitch Beer, who trains at Kembla Grange.

“We're probably benefited from that a little bit, as we’ve had stable staff reach out and say, ‘I’m looking at getting out of Sydney.’ If you look at Randwick, it’s such a desirable place to live and so expensive, that it’s almost impossible to get a share house in the area if you aren’t given accommodation with your job. And then nearly half your wage has gone in rent.”

According to property.com.au, the average rent on a two-bedroom house in Randwick is $995 per week, while the same property costs an average of $1.35 million to purchase.

“I think accommodation is a big issue. There's a huge demand in shorter term staff coming out from overseas, but accommodation is the big issue. They don't want to get into a 12-month lease. They want to do six months here and six months in Melbourne and six months in Queensland, which is great because it is a very universal job riding track work or working with horses in stables,” said Beer.

Adequate accommodation helps staff retention

Bloodstock agent James Harron recently began a business, Aveley Homes, building modular homes designed as accommodation solutions for horse farms. Modular homes are built in a factory, transported to site, and the only tradespeople required for the final site are to set up foundations, plumbing, and electricity.

“Staff retention is becoming increasingly important. Good staff are becoming harder and harder to come by and a paramount part of looking after staff is giving them the right living conditions. There is a lot of hard work involved with looking after horses, with long hours. It can be a very erratic, different hours, and I think it's so important to come home to a nice home and somewhere you can enjoy and sleep well and rest and recharge for the day ahead,” said Harron.

And as Beer says, there is a need across more than just stud farms. “If the racing bodies and race clubs can look at incorporating accommodation into new stabling facilities, it will be a big plus,” said Beer.

Community building for staff lifestyle

The right accommodation can form part of the lifestyle of working with horses. Stable hands and stud staff need more than the chaotic university student share house that some of us look back at fondly, but in reality, was rundown, shabby and … importantly, cheap. Cheap is important when working on a low wage, but a nice place to sleep also matters when working long hours.

“Looking back at my early years in the industry, I worked for lots of different people on different farms and I really remember the ones that did have the right facilities and really looked after their staff,” said Harron.

“One of my first jobs, when I came out to Australia when I was 19, was at Coolmore at Jerry’s Plains. They had their staff accommodation village and there isn’t a lot nearby in Jerry's Plans, but the village itself was awesome and it's where you met lots of different people from all different countries. We had a barbeque and a swimming pool and a recreational room. It was fantastic, whether you were coming for a shorter stay or for longer, there was lots to do, and I’ve met friends there that I still have today.

“Coolmore provided incredible facilities for the staff hence they've got so many long-term staff all over the world who have stayed with them. Even at my very first job at Coolmore in Ireland when I was 15 years old on a summer holiday they always really looked after their staff, with incredible accommodation and facilities and they’ve got an amazing staff retention rate across the world.”

Good accommodation is core to staff retention, but it’s not the whole picture. “Accommodation is a really big part, and I think that no matter what in life, people can sustain a lot if they feel like they're working towards something,” said Beer.

“There are kids at uni eating two minute noodles and using the free wifi at Maccas but they are working towards something and they’ll look back and say, ‘I really struggled through those four or five years but look at me now.’ But for our staff, what's the end goal for these guys? Where's the carrot?”

Harron has similar concerns about staff retention being more than just about accommodation, although with his new business venture being in accommodation, it’s a core part of his thinking. “I’ve experienced different things over the years, working for different people, but it’s more important now than ever to look after staff properly. You have to offer people a comfortable standard of living. The pool of good staff is shrinking, and the good people will go where they are looked after,” said Harron.

“I have fond memories of those working conditions and that's what I'd want for my kids one day when they join the workforce, is that they are looked after in their workplace.”

Unique challenges for horse-related businesses

For racing and breeding, there are unique challenges for staff accommodation. Horses require constant attention, and the early starts make commuting an additional burden on already tired staff. Being on-site benefits the horses and the staff.

“With horses, you really need people that can be on the farms and be able to react to things that happen, a yearling getting hurt, or a horse getting cast, or foaling down mares. There’s a real need for having those quick response times,” said Harron.

“Generally people do have the space in the land to do have staff housing on site, and in the long term it proves to be an important thing to invest in. It will pay you back in bucket loads. Additionally, working with horses is long hours and hard work and you don’t want people having to travel too far to-and-from work as well and risking driving while tired.”

The industry is all too aware of the impacts of driving tired, with several participants involved in serious traffic accidents in the past few years. Apprentice jockey Bronte Simpson died in a car accident just before Christmas, while Peter Moody’s staff member Gio Spiga was badly injured in a truck accident in 2024. In November 2025, jockey Glenn Cahill was injured in a car accident on the way home from Wagga Wagga races.

TTR extends our thoughts to the family and friends of anyone affected by this topic.

How does modular housing work?

In a time when racing needs to retain staff, and when house prices are making rents unaffordable to people in lower income brackets, Harron believes there is a good case to be made for modular housing as a solution to staff retention. Building houses off site means a more controlled build environment, resulting in the ability to offer a fixed price for a house. The homes are built for their ability to be transported to site and are Australian made and designed to meet all regulations.

“We are able to travel through the night with the houses and deliver them anywhere. As well as the obvious farming and horse related markets, we’ve also been approached by companies for larger groups of accommodation style villages and also for social housing, which is obviously there is a big demand for at the moment,” said Harron.

“We launched at the back end of last year and we've got a good orders coming right through this year already. We've been really pleased. As we expected, we’ve had quite a lot of interest rurally, and from around the country, and we are also in discussions with various councils around emergency and social housing too.

“It's a real happening space, that of modular housing with modern methods of construction, and a market which is becoming bigger and bigger. Governments and local councils like it because it limits workplace accidents too as the buildings are built off-site in a controlled environment. You aren’t having all the risks attached with building on site, and you don’t have noise or time restrictions, or problems getting trades to site on time. On top of that, the speed of delivery makes it very attractive for everyone.”

And with Coolmore’s staff village as a good memory for Harron, there’s plenty that Harron can offer to farms wanting to emulate a model that already works with a social hub on site.

“We can arrange that too. It obviously comes down to how much land people have, and what layout they want. Our general manager has a lot of experience as a builder, and he's great at understanding what the best layouts are and how to work with their clients to create a design that will best suit their needs.”

Sometimes the solution to staff retention isn’t purely about wage increases. It’s about giving people a nice space to live so they can have more choice over how they spend their wages, rather than spending most of it on rent.