These are the areas along the east coast of Australia that are outperforming their neighbours when it comes to price growth – and you might have to be prepared to leave the big smoke if you want a piece of the action.
According to new data from realestate.com.au, if you are a property buyer looking for the top performing state purely in terms of price growth in the past 12 months, it’s impossible to go past WA.
The West filled no fewer than 11 of the Top 20 slots for unit and house price growth across the nation in the past year, largely in Perth’s north and south east.
But if your focus is squarely on the east coast, the best performing suburbs included Geelong’s Corio, Branxton in the Hunter Valley in NSW and Central Queensland’s Mount Morgan.
An exclusive new cut of data by realestate.com.au has revealed “hotness scores” for more than 5000 suburbs across Australia based on how they have performed compared to their surrounding region over the past 12 months – simply the difference between a suburb’s percentage price growth compared to growth in their region.
For example, the top performing suburb in Australia is Wheelers Hill in Melbourne’s south east. Its current median price for units is $937,000, up 36 per cent in the past 12 months compared to a 9 per cent increase for that region, delivering a hotness score of 27 (which is 36 per cent minus 9).
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In terms of houses, the biggest hotness score was 25 for Whitlam in the ACT, with a current median price of $918,000, up 35 per cent compared to just 10 per cent growth for the ACT – resulting in a hotness score of 25.
But most of the chart-toppers for hotness scores for houses and units around the country were outside the heart of the major cities.
Some of the top areas were Moree (median $455,000) and Cobar (median $295) in regional NSW with the highest hotness scores for houses in the state at 17, while the
Latrobe-Gippsland region of Victoria featured heavily for housing in Morwell (hotness score 15), Traralgon (12) and Churchill (11).
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In Queensland, Mount Morgan (median $329,000, hotness score of 12) south of Rockhampton was at the top of the Sunshine State’s list for houses, while the Sunshine Coast did well for units with Little Mountain (22) and Bli Bli (16) at the top of the national hotness charts.
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REA Group executive manager of economics Angus Moore explained that this was the result of buyers seeking more affordable housing in regions as prices remained beyond their reach in cities.
He said the hotness scores were a good guide for people who knew the broad area they wanted to live in, but were still looking for the right suburb in that region.
“In terms of trends from the data, affordability is encouraging people to look in more affordable areas and supporting demand in more affordable areas,” he said.
“The fact that regional houses have shown up at the top of the list is consistent with that challenging affordability picture favouring more affordable parts of the market.”
But there were some exceptions to the trend to go regional.
Bellevue Hill in Sydney, one of Australia’s most prestigious suburbs with a current median price of more than $11.6 million, grew by 18 per cent in the past 12 months compared to just a 3 per cent average growth for Sydney’s eastern suburbs, recording a hotness score of 15.
And units in Sydney’s southwest also outperformed, with former housing commission area Miller (25) and nearby Cartwright (20) both making the national Top 10 for units.
