Australia’s most contested real estate isn’t a waterfront unit – it’s a burial plot.
With land scarce, prices rising and planning lagging, families are discovering they can’t afford a final address close to home.
Just like the housing market, cemetery supply is being outpaced by demand.
National projections suggest roughly 30 years of capacity, but major capitals are poised to run out within a decade as population growth, urbanisation and soaring land values collide.
A 2020 report warned all Sydney public cemeteries could be full by 2032, with some religious and cultural groups facing a total lack of suitable space in just a few years.
In Victoria, several metropolitan councils are expected to run out of plots by the end of 2035, with others reaching capacity earlier.
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Like Australia’s housing crisis, high demand and land scarcity have led to another accommodation crunch: we’re running out of burial sites.
Even with around 70 per cent of Australians choosing cremation, the remaining 30 per cent still overwhelms traditional cemeteries.
“Everyone’s used this expression before but there’s a cost of dying crisis just like there’s a cost of living crisis,” Reternity founder Peter Russel told Seven News.
“Burials and caskets and so forth is just so expensive … 62 per cent of us never visit a relative after being buried. People just don’t go to the gravesites anymore. So for various reasons, being buried is just not consistent with the modern way of life.”
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Reternity founder Peter Russel says more people are looking for alternative final resting places to save on cost.
Australia records roughly 170,000 deaths annually and is on track to double its yearly death count by 2070 – an ageing population meeting a fixed land base.
The outcome looks and behaves like a housing squeeze: scarcity, premiums for blue‑chip locations, and a push to fringe “greenfield” sites far from where families live.
The price of peace: Funerals becoming a luxury
That scarcity is colliding with household budgets already stretched by the cost‑of‑living crunch.
The estimated cost of a burial rose from $9,055 in 2019 to $11,039 in 2025, while cremations climbed from $6,334 to $8,045, according to the 2023 Australian Seniors Cost of Death Report.
Set that against the average Australian household spend of about $2,856 a week in 2025, and a projected median weekly household income of around $1,826.92, there’s precious little room for a five-figure-sum end‑of‑life shock.
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Dr Hannah Wilson is a death and dying researcher who has helped develop a course on the subject for University of Melbourne medical students. Picture: Wayne Taylor
Australians have been quick to call out the insanity of burial plot pricing.
“I can’t afford to die,” one person lamented on facebook.
“Just like houses. What a coincidence,” another commented, while a third joked: “I’m getting cremated, will be the only time in my life I have a smoking hot body.”
Sydney’s space race
Sydney’s east shows what happens when cemetery land behaves like prestige property.
A recent NSW planning audit flagged a “critical shortage” of gravesites, with multiple faith‑run cemeteries predicted to run out within years.
Waverley Cemetery – the clifftop icon known for its Victorian and Edwardian monuments – is rapidly approaching capacity while battling the wear and tear of its coastal environment.
Its 2025 price list reads like the eastern suburbs premium: $4,536 for a standard coffin or casket interment on weekdays, plus $622 on weekends $28,330 for a 25‑year renewable interment right – effectively, the burial plot – on the 2024–2025 schedule.
Concept images show what Waverley Council’s new ‘memorial wall’ is set to look like at Waverley Cemetery. Source: Waverley Council
For ashes, a $1,270 interment fee, with niche wall and memorial garden options ranging from $4,200 to $26,480 depending on location and exclusivity
To address these challenges, Waverley Council has unveiled plans for a “memorial wall” designed to alleviate the congestion of gravesites.
The innovative solution involves the construction of 20 memorial walls along Quinn Rd, each featuring 36 niches for ash interment.
Waverley Cemetery in Sydneys eastern suburbs has long been regarded one of Australia’s most scenic final resting places. Picture: Richard Dobson
Each of the niches will be available for long-term lease at the cost of a second-hand car.
“The memorial wall represents the most effective and sensitive way to meet these constraints,” a council’s spokesman said.
A single niche is priced at $8,540 including the space, interment and a bronze plaque – a long-term lease pitched at about the cost of a second‑hand car.
Desperate times call for desperate measures
The scarcity of burial plots has also led to a surge in prices on platforms like Facebook Marketplace, where plots at Waverley Cemetery have been listed for as much as $165,000 – in line with the cost of apartments in some Aussie locations.
Another two burial plots in the same cemetery were on sale last year for $65,000, giving people a chance to be buried on the same grounds as some of the nation’s biggest names.
Talking to A Current Affair in 2024, 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.
A burial plot at Waverley Cemetery has been advertised on facebeook marketplace for a staggering price.
“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.”
In response to the ongoing crisis, Sydney has seen the opening of its first new Crown cemetery in over 85 years at Varroville, providing 136,000 burial plots.
Additional cemeteries are planned in areas such as Lidcombe to further address the shortage.
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