The 5 suburbs that gained the most value in 2021

The nation’s real estate market witnessed a staggering amount of growth in 2021, with data showing the median house price throughout the country rose by 25.2 per cent.

The bumper year has caused such a stir in the property market that, for the first time on record, the median house price in Australia’s capital cities shot above the $1 million mark.

Domain’s latest House Price Report showed that Aussie buyers forked out an average of $1,066,133 across all eight cities, further solidifying the notion that buyers looking for freestanding homes in a metropolis now need to shell out north of seven figures.

Obviously, though, some suburbs across Australia performed better than others.

Surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly), four out of the five suburbs that witnessed the greatest annual growth across the nation were rural coastal towns in Northern New South Wales.

Byron Bay, NSW

Yes, the stereotypical talking point of 2021’s property market takes out the top spot.

How could it not? Byron Bay has been the subject of stratospheric levels of interest from buyers not only locally, but from across the globe for years now.

Last year, however, demand for property in the beachside locale was taken to another level, as city-goers cashed in on their inner-CBD homes and headed for the coast, looking for a beguiling seachange lifestyle.

Surprisingly, however, it wasn’t freestanding houses that saw the most significant level of year-on-year growth in Byron Bay, but units.

According to Domain’s data, the median price for units in the far-north NSW town shot up by a scarcely believable 107.3 per cent.

And it’s not as though there were only one or two units sold in Byron Bay last year. On the contrary, there were 80, making the triple-digit result more unbelievable.

A unit in the charismatic beachside suburb will now cost buyers an average of $1,451,250, which is unprecedented.

Minyama, Queensland

Located on Queensland’s increasingly popular Sunshine Coast, the suburb of Minyama witnessed the second-greatest level of property value growth anywhere in the country over the past 12 months.

Idyllically surrounded by water on all sides, the temperate suburb registered 106 house sales in 2021, with the median price shooting up by 82 per cent.

The average house in Minyama now costs $1,815,000, which is a profound leap over such a short amount of time.

More profound still is the locale’s five-year house value growth, which, according to Domain, sits at a whopping 212.9 per cent.

Terranora, NSW

Also located near the northern border of NSW, tropical Terranora recorded the third-highest level of increased property value in Australia.

Just a short 45-minute drive away from Byron Bay, the Tweed Coast suburb saw 51 homes sell over the past year, with a median sale price of $1.3 million.

This represented a 66.7 per cent annual gain in house prices and reaffirmed the well-documented trend of more people moving out of CBDs to more rural areas.

Suffolk Park, NSW

Byron Bay’s southerly neighbouring suburb, Suffolk Park, took out the fourth spot as the locale with the highest level of annual property value increases.

Domain’s data showed that the oceanside locale had 72 houses sell in 2021, with a median sale price of $1,885,000.

This translated to Byron Bay’s adjoining suburb seeing its average house price shoot up by 61.8 per cent over the last year and a whopping 114.2 per cent over the previous five years.

Lennox Head, NSW

Also just a stone’s throw away from the epicentre of Australia’s property value growth, Lennox Head in far north NSW rounds out this list as the suburb with the fifth-highest level of property price growth in 2021.

With 111 houses sold in the coastal town last year, the 2478 postcode proved to be eminently desirable, with the median house price shooting up to $1,520,000, which translates to a sizeable 60.4 per cent jump year-on-year and a 105.4 per cent increase of the last five years.