Sea and tree-change suburbs top list of most property sales in 2020

Regional towns and holiday hot spots have topped the list of suburbs with the most property sales in 2020, new Domain data has revealed.

Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast has topped the list with 1518 property sales. NSW coastal holiday hot spot Port Macquarie was second with 1161 sales and regional town Orange third with 984 sales.

While Surfers Paradise has retained its top spot from 2019’s list, Port Macquarie and Orange have moved up in the rankings this year, where they ranked third and seventh, respectively.

The volume of property sales in each suburb is reflective of the overall number of dwellings in the area. But, covid restrictions have played an influential role in the rankings of these traditional high-volume suburbs, Domain senior research analyst Nicola Powell said.

“The length and degree of covid lockdowns across our states will have had a varied impact on sales activity,” Dr Powell said.

“What’s quite interesting about the top 30 is there is a number of regional areas. It speaks to that trend of regional movement we’ve seen. We’ve already seen people move away from our larger, more expensive capital cities prior to covid but what we’re now seeing is that covid has accelerated that. Some of those areas are lifestyle locations as well.”

Suburbs ranked by number of property sales in 2020

Melbourne has dropped from second to fourth in the rankings this year, which could be the result of the city’s prolonged restrictions. Victorian suburbs in the top 30 that also dropped in rank include the south-west Melbourne suburb of Point Cook which dropped five places, Mildura which dropped two, and Frankston and Reservoir which each dropped one place.

Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast suburbs have continued to dominate the rankings, namely due to their high dwellings numbers and high-density apartment buildings. Gold Coast suburb Southport retained its fifth position, and the Sunshine Coast suburbs of Buderim (seventh) and Maroochydore (eighth) saw strong sales numbers for the year.

While the start of the year was affected by the advent of COVID-19, Ray White Surfers Paradise CEO Andrew Bell said the second half created a momentum he had not witnessed before on the Gold Coast.

“There has been a very prominent shift from people seeing this as a holiday destination to a place of choice,” Bell said.

“As the year progressed, we just started to see an acceleration of people saying they’d love to have a place on the Gold Coast and if there was another pandemic or the like, they’d have a foothold in the Gold Coast.”

Bell said despite border restrictions, interstate buyers were still buying sight unseen with the help of video, virtual inspections and technology.

This strong sales activity has been driven by retirees and investors who are seeing the opportunity emerge on the Gold Coast.

“Pre-COVID-19 we would get between 4000 to 4500 inquiries a month to rent properties,” Bell said. “Currently, it has been well over 10,000 a month. That’s a lot of people saying they’ll move, rent first, and then see whether they’ll buy after that. Investors are also encouraged by the strong demand and we have the lowest vacancy factor that we’ve ever had.”

In NSW, rural and coastal suburbs have jumped in the rankings. Most notably the highly-populated rural town of Dubbo, which has jumped from 22nd to 10th in 2020, and the Sydney northern beaches suburb of Dee Why which has moved from 20th to 24th.

In Orange, an increase in job opportunities brought by the expansion of nearby Cadia Mine, alongside the idyllic lifestyle on offer, could be behind its third-place ranking nationally, local selling agent Adam Savage, of Peter Fisher Real Estate said.

“When covid started in February, for a few months it was relatively quiet…but the end of May onwards has been extremely busy. I’ve been 11 years in the industry and I’ve never seen it as busy,” Savage said.

“But also because of covid, people started to realise that they wanted something safe. This has prompted the tree change they [city dwellers] were thinking about – now they can work from home.”