More than 300 suburbs hit $1m+ median price

Nila Sweeney| Australian Financial Review| 13 January 2022

https://www.afr.com/property/residential/more-than-300-suburbs-hit-1m-median-price-20220111-p59ndy

More than 300 Australian suburbs have crossed the $1 million, median house value in just seven months, with Sydney and regional NSW adding the largest number of new entrants, data from CoreLogic shows.

Between May and December last year, 311 suburbs hit a median price of $1 million or higher, lifting the nationwide total 38.4 per cent to 1120.

A total of 77 Sydney suburbs joined the ranks, with most of the new entrants located on the Central Coast, as demand rippled out from the capital. There are now 417 Sydney suburbs with million-dollar-plus median prices.

Houses in Tascott, Woy Woy, Umina Beach and Lisarow in the Gosford area now have a million-dollar median, as well as those in Tumbi Umbi, Bateau Bay, Chittaway Point and Ourimbah in the Wyong district.

The number of million-dollar suburbs more than doubled to 116 in regional NSW, boosted by many Newcastle suburbs joining the club.Advertisement

Among them are New Lambton Heights, Lambton, New Lambton, Adamstown, Adamstown Heights and Carrington.

Brisbane also recorded a sharp rise in the number of suburbs hitting the million-dollar mark with 40 new entrants, taking its total to 91, while regional Queensland added 36 suburbs to 82.

It’s almost impossible to buy a house under a million dollars within a 10 kilometre radius from the CBD.

— Brisbane buyers’ agent Zoran Solano

They include suburbs from Brisbane’s north, south and west such as Sandgate, Shorncliffe, Nundah, Kedron, Sunnybank, Annerley and Enoggera.

“I’m not surprised to see a large increase in the number of suburbs reaching the million-dollar mark in Brisbane because of the strong growth we’ve had in the past year,” said Zoran Solano, buyer’s agent with Hot Property Buyers Agency based in Brisbane.

“A lot of these suburbs have been flying under the radar for so long, but are now rising strongly as buyers seek out cheaper options. At the moment, it’s almost impossible to buy a house under a million dollars within a 10-kilometre radius from the CBD.”

In Melbourne, 37 suburbs have joined the pool and lifted the total to 221, while Adelaide added 25 suburbs to 70 and the ACT recorded 18 new additions to a total of 45.

Melbourne’s north-east, north-west and outer east accounted for the majority of suburbs reaching million plus medians. Among them are Watsonia, Heidelberg Heights, Keilor East, Gisborne, Croydon and Selby.

In Adelaide, most of the newly minted million-dollar suburbs are located in the central and hills district, such as Teringie, Stirling, Nailsworth, Aldgate and Prospect.

Canberra’s new additions are mostly from the Gungahlin and Belconnen districts, such as Palmerston, Moncrieff, Throsby and McKellar.

In Perth, 10 new suburbs have crossed the million-plus median, and boosted the total to 52. They include inner Perth suburbs as well as those in the north-west and south-west such as Inglewood, Fremantle, Alfred Cove and Waterford.

Hobart’s million-dollar suburbs count has risen from two suburbs to seven. They include Newtown, Mount Stuart and South Hobart.

Considering housing values nationally have increased by 22.6 per cent since March 2020, it’s no surprise.

— CoreLogic’s Tim Lawless

Since the onset of the pandemic, the share of million-dollar suburbs has ballooned across the country, rising from just 16.2 per cent of all suburbs nationally in March 2020 to 29.8 per cent of suburbs in December 2021, the CoreLogic data shows.

“Considering housing values nationally have increased by 22.6 per cent since March 2020, it’s no surprise to see the number of suburbs with a median value of at least a million dollars increase so substantially,” said CoreLogic research director Tim Lawless.

“In cities like Sydney, where the median house value first rose above the $1 million dollar mark in 2016 and is now approaching the $1.4 million mark, a million-dollar purchase price for a house has become the norm.

“However in some regions, the rise in the number of suburbs where the typical house is worth more than a million dollars was quite a new phenomenon.”

In Hobart there was not a single suburb with a million-dollar, median house value before the pandemic, but now there are seven across the metropolitan area of Hobart, representing almost 15 per cent of all suburbs.

More than seven in 10 Sydney suburbs are now attracting more than a million-dollar median house price, compared to just one in two, before the pandemic.

But the jump in the share of suburbs with a million-plus median has been the most spectacular in the ACT, Mr Lawless said.

“Leading into the pandemic only 4.9 per cent of suburbs were recording a median house value of $1 million or more, with that figure rising to almost 54 per cent by the end of last year,” he said.

“The surge in suburbs with a million-plus, median value is a reminder of the worsening housing affordability pressures and the record level of housing debt in Australia.”

The proportion of suburbs with a median house value of $3 million or more rose to 2.3 per cent last December from 0.6 per cent in March 2020, with 94 per cent of these suburbs located in Sydney and 6 per cent located in Melbourne.

Despite a surge in house value during the pandemic, suburbs with a median value of $5 million or higher remained scarce, with only eight suburbs, which are in Sydney or 0.2 per cent of all suburbs nationally.