The suburbs where you should have bought a house five years ago

Houses and unit prices in a string of once-affordable suburbs have boomed over the past five years, propelled by buyers’ search for a better lifestyle and cheaper housing.

Several neighbourhoods that had a median house price of $1 million or less at the end of 2018 have since had price hikes of at least 50 per cent and, in some cases, values have more than doubled.

Such suburbs are largely concentrated in Sydney’s relatively affordable west, the Mornington Peninsula and south-east Queensland.

But not all affordable neighbourhoods recorded the same pace of growth and others have risen by only single digits during the same time frame.

In Sydney, median house prices more than doubled in the outer suburbs of Leppington and Box Hill, and jumped by at least 50 per cent in Harrington Park, Denham Court, Kellyville Ridge and Kings Langley over the five years to the September quarter of 2023 on Domain data.

LJ Hooker Leppington/Austral sales manager Anthony Bucca said buyers were attracted to the area due to the availability of land, the addition of a new shopping centre and infrastructure such as a train station and the Western Sydney airport, due to open in 2026.

“We grew up in this area and for a long time people never believed the government was going to build it,” he said.

“Leppington is on the south-west growth map as the residential area to supply the aerotropolis.”

He said some buyers were families looking for affordable options or to upgrade as their family grew, while investors were also active.

In Greater Melbourne, house prices increased 68.9 per cent in Blairgowrie and at least 50 per cent in McCrae and Rye, as well as Mount Martha and Cape Woolamai.

RT Edgar Rye director Cameron Gulliford said more buyers have been moving to the peninsula permanently in recent years instead of buying holiday homes.

The adoption of remote working when the pandemic hit had increased the area’s appeal, along with the Peninsula Link freeway which improved commuting to inner Melbourne, he said.

“The peninsula has been undervalued for some time and people are starting to recognise the value of having a property down here,” he said.

“A location like the Mornington Peninsula with its beaches, with its wineries, golf courses, with all the attractions that it has … It’s a beautiful spot to live.”

In south-east Queensland, several once-affordable neighbourhoods on the Sunshine Coast and Gold Coast have boomed, as well as suburbs in Brisbane.

The median unit price in Noosa Heads and Coolum Beach has more than doubled over the past five years, while house prices have almost doubled in Buddina, Clear Island Waters and Mermaid Waters.

Tom Offermann Real Estate sales agent Rebekah Offermann said there was a surge in demand for the Noosa Shire during the lockdown years, but only a limited supply of homes for sale because so much land is covered by national parks and waterways.

Many locked-down southerners reconsidered where they wanted to live or brought forward plans to move north, she said.

“Noosa has always attracted a lot of southern clientele, whether that be for secondary properties, holiday homes and investments or people moving to Queensland and to Noosa for climate and all the rest. But it was definitely exacerbated by COVID.”

Ray White chief economist Nerida Conisbee said demand to live on the coast had been increasing over the long term but was accelerated by the pandemic.

“Mornington Peninsula, Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast were always popular, but you couldn’t really easily commute daily from them,” she said.

“The pandemic changed that. People working from home became a much more common thing to do and that led to higher demand and also the desire for holiday homes led to an increase.”

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In Sydney, Conisbee said the investment from the state government into public transport connections to the north-west, as well as plans for the new airport in the south-west, had made these areas more liveable.

In terms of whether the growth over the past five years could be sustained in the future, Conisbee said it depended on the area.

For example, the Gold Coast used to be a boom-bust town but has changed to an area with more permanent residents, where first home buyers snap up holiday apartments and there is a shortage of land, she said.

While the gains were good news for those already in the market, they had made it tough for those looking to upsize and increasingly difficult for first home buyers to break into the market.