The performance of the property market certainly hasn’t gone the way we were anticipating 12 months ago. At that time the expectation for 2009 was that the market would see minimal value growth and that yields and rents would ramp up. Of course the opposite has occurred, with aggressive interest rate cuts and the First Home Buyers Grant Boost, market activity was significantly stimulated and values rose by 10% during the first 10 months of the year. Rents and yields improved during the early part of the year but both have fallen in recent months as value growth has ramped up and rental growth has failed to keep pace.
This week, we look at the year’s top performing suburbs across a range of key property market indicators. Below, the left table indicates the results for houses and the right table details units.
Sales volumes
Berwick in outer south-eastern Melbourne has recorded the greatest number of sales during the last year for houses with 805 sales. Melbourne tops the sales count for units with 1,289 sales. The list shows a dominance of larger suburbs in growth areas of capital cities as well as larger regional suburbs for houses. Meanwhile, units are characterised as being found in inner and near city areas or larger regional coastal markets.
Most expensive suburbs
Unsurprisingly the most expensive houses are generally found in Sydney and within the Eastern Suburbs. However, Peppermint Grove tops the lot with a median house price of $5.1 million. It’s a similar story for the unit market, four Sydney entries and one Perth with Dawes Point in Sydney topping the list with a median price of $1.34 million.
Top growth areas
The top growth suburbs nationally are perhaps a little surprisingly dominated by regional areas with only three suburbs (Mount Torrens, Tarragindi and Woodville Gardens) found in a capital city. The NT regional outpost of Tennant Creek is the top performer for houses with growth of 43.4% whilst the Brisbane suburb of Tarragindi has seen the greatest jump in unit prices boosted by some higher quality new stock in the suburb.
Most expensive rentals
The top rents for houses are found in some of the most popular inner city residential areas of the country except for the WA mining area of Dampier which has strong demand and clear housing shortages. For units, it is popular inner city and harbour front suburbs dominating the list, all of which are found in Sydney.
Highest rental yields
The best gross rental yields for houses are exclusively found within regional mining and resource areas. It’s not surprising to see this result across the housing market due to these areas enjoying continuing strong demand and in many instances being hampered by little scope to provide additional housing. For the unit market, most of the best performers are found in NSW (Carlton the exception) and only Carlton isn’t located in Sydney. The top two, Ultimo and Carlton, are located near universities and have significant supply of smaller more affordable student accommodation which enjoys affordable purchase prices and strong rental demand.
