The north-facing six-bedroom, six-bathroom waterfront home on Lindsay Avenue, Darling Point in Sydney’s eastern suburbs topped the highest house sale this year at $60 million.
The share of homes selling for more than $1 million jumped to a record high of 23.8 per cent of all sales in the 12 months to May, buoyed by the bullish economic and property performance during the latter part of 2021, data from CoreLogic shows.
An additional 450 house markets and 37 unit markets nationwide joined the million-dollar club during the same period, taking the total number of suburbs to 1367.
But these newly minted million-dollar suburbs may not stay long in the list as prices weaken across the board, says CoreLogic’s research director, Tim Lawless.
“New entrants to the list are likely to be more vulnerable, as many of these areas have only just scraped over the million-dollar mark,” Mr Lawless said.
“I would expect the number of suburbs with a million-dollar median to trend lower through the downturn, as a drop in housing values drags more suburbs below the million-dollar mark.
“Suburbs with a median value well over the million-dollar mark are likely to see their values fall, but many of these areas would have to see housing prices fall substantially more than we are expecting before the median dipped below the million-dollar mark.”
A 10 per cent price drop would cut one-fifth or 274 suburbs off the million-dollar list nationwide, and 87 Sydney markets would drop out of the list.
If house prices fall by 15 per cent, 371 markets would fall off the million-dollar list, or a drop of 27.1 per cent.
Under a 20 per cent price decline scenario, 470 markets would slip below the million-dollar-median mark, or a 34.4 per cent reduction. In this instance, 147 suburbs will lose their million-dollar status in Sydney and 57 will drop out in Melbourne.
In the past 12 months, 448 Sydney house markets and 104 unit markets raced past the million-dollar mark, up by 26.6 per cent from the previous year or a total of 128 markets added to the list.
Flexible working arrangements and the high demand for detached housing fuelled strong price growth across Sydney’s outer ring suburbs, sparking a jump in new million-dollar markets in these areas.
In the city’s south-west, 30 new suburbs crossed the million-dollar median mark, 15 in the outer west and 20 on the Central Coast. During the same period, more than half (51.9 per cent) of all sales in Greater Sydney had a value of $1 million or higher.
Across regional NSW, the number of markets with a million-dollar median value has more than doubled to 154, with the bulk located in the Southern Highlands and Shoalhaven (18), Illawarra (16) and Newcastle and Lake Macquarie (23) regions. A total of 100 new regional markets have crossed the million-dollar threshold during the same period.
The six-bedroom beachfront home on the Gold Coast’s millionaires’ row, Hedges Avenue at Mermaid Beach, was sold for $21.5 million in May – the most expensive regional house sold so far in 2022.
In Melbourne, 212 house markets and 11 unit markets posted a median value at or above $1 million in May. The majority are located in the inner city where 39 suburbs now command at least a million-dollar price tag. In the inner south, 42 suburbs have a million-dollar median value or higher and 30 each in the inner east and outer east.
Across regional Victoria 22 house markets made the cut, with 16 suburbs located in Geelong.
Mr Lawless said while houses significantly outweighed units in the million-dollar club, the unit sector could be more resilient to larger value falls than the detached housing sector.
“The unit market has generally recorded less growth than houses through the pandemic growth cycle, especially across the largest capitals,” he said.
“With housing affordability challenges likely to deflect more demand towards the medium to high density sector, along with a burgeoning undersupply of newly built unit stock, we could see unit values holding up better than house values over the coming year.”
The number of million-dollar markets has more than doubled across Brisbane and regional Queensland compared to a year ago, sparked by relative affordability and steady stream of interstate migration.
A total of 122 Brisbane suburbs now attract a million dollar or higher median price, and 107 markets across regional Queensland.
Adelaide now has 79 markets with a median house value higher than $1 million – more than double the number of markets recorded this time last year. Over the year to May, 13 per cent of sales recorded a sale price at or above $1 million.
Across Perth, 56 house markets made the million-dollar list in May, up from 43 a year ago.
A north-facing six-bedroom, six-bathroom waterfront home on Lindsay Avenue, Darling Point, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs topped the highest sale price so far this year, at $60 million.
In Melbourne, a five-bedroom property in Orrong Road, Toorak, was sold for $38.5 million in February.
Meanwhile, a six-bedroom beachfront home on the Gold Coast’s millionaires’ row, Hedges Avenue at Mermaid Beach, was sold for $21.5 million in May – the most expensive regional house sold this year.
(Fin Review – June 2022)
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