National home values were starting to trend higher, lifting 0.9% since early March, due to stronger demand in housing, as advertised supply remained low, according to CoreLogic.
“At a more granular level, this uplift in dwelling values has flowed through to around 35% of suburbs analysed in the March quarter,” said Eliza Owen (pictured above), head of research at CoreLogic Australia. “This proportion is up from 19% in the December quarter, and a substantial improvement on the recent low of just 16.5% of suburbs over the three months ending October 2022.”
So, which were the top performing suburbs this quarter?
Of the top 25 performing suburbs this quarter, 20 could be found in regional Australia, across SA, Victoria, NSW, WA, and Queensland.
“It seems to be more rural regional markets with particularly low price points that have seen the strongest rates of growth,” Owen said. “The average median value of regional top-performing suburbs was $442,468. Dinner Plain in the Victorian Alps, 13km from Mount Hotham, is a striking exception among the top-performing regional suburbs, where values have trended higher following a slight dip through the second half of 2022.”
Sydney was the only capital city represented, with affluent North Sydney or North Shore suburbs the top-performing suburbs.
“These suburbs are largely popular with owner-occupiers, having a higher-than-average owner-occupier rate of 76%, compared to an average 63% across Greater Sydney suburbs,” Owen said.
A relatively high volume of suburbs across Sydney and Perth was experiencing growth. But these two cities have very different growth dynamics.
“Sydney dwellings are showing signs of a rebound, following a peak-to-trough decline of around -14% over the year to January,” Owen said. “Strong recovery has been concentrated in the high end of the market, with the top five performing suburbs having median dwelling values of at least $1.5 million.
“If Sydney is leading capital cities out of a downswing, Perth has yet to go through one. Perth dwelling values have held reasonably steady since rates started to rise, tracking just -0.4% below a recent high in July last year. This mild decline follows an upswing of 25.9% between June 2020 and July 2022.
“Home values across Perth are highly affordable due to subdued capital growth performance in the longer term and have likely not been as impacted by recent rate rises as a result. If anything, it has been more affordable suburbs that led growth across Perth in the March quarter, including Forrestdale (up 4.7%), Bouvard (4.6%) and Falcon (3.7%), all located well south of the city.”
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