Suburb Trends April 2021 | Highest median growth suburbs!

This month we chat up suburbs going up across Australia.
Welcome back to another edition of our Suburb Trends report where we look at Australian suburbs’ condition, analysing, rationalising and theorising their present and future. In this episode, we'll focus on the top 10 highest median growth suburbs, honing in only on houses and suburbs with more than nine sales a month.

The team looks at the various possible reasons for the growth in these suburbs, dissecting buyer behaviour, financial flows, and the development of new stock on the market.

We discuss some suburbs you know and love, questioning if the statistics around median growth is an effective lens to evaluate an area's future?

RELEVANT EPISODES:
Suburb Trends March 2021
Suburb Trends February 2021
Suburb Trends December 2020

GUEST LINKS:
www.suburbtrends.com
https://www.suburbtrends.com/top-10-price-change-suburbs

HOST LINKS:
Looking for a Sydney Buyers Agent? www.gooddeeds.com.au
Work with Veronica: https://linktr.ee/veronicamorgan

Looking for a Mortgage Broker? www.wealthful.com.au
Work with Chris: hello@wealthful.com.au

 Send in your questions to: questions@theelephantintheroom.com.au

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Please note that this has been transcribed by half-human-half-robot, so brace yourself for typos and the odd bit of weirdness…
This episode was recorded in April 2021.

Veronica Morgan: This is our suburb trends report for April, 2021. And we'll be looking at where prices are moving across the country, actually this week, mostly up sometimes down. And also, while they're moving in this episode, we'll be discussing the top 10 suburbs with the highest median growth. And as usual, we'll be digging deeper to see what's really going on.

Veronica Morgan: Welcome to the elephant in the room. This is the podcast where we love to talk about the big things in property that never usually get talked about. I'm Veronica Morgan, real estate agent buyer's agent co-host of Foxtel's location, location, location, Australia, and author of auction ready.

Chris Bates: And I'm Chris Bates mortgage broker.

Kent Lardner: And I'm the data game.

Chris Bates: Before we get started. I need to let you know that nothing we say on air can be taken as personal advice. We always recommend you engage the services of a professional.

Veronica Morgan: Don't forget that you can access the transcript for this episode on the website, as well as download our free full forecast report, which experts can you trust to get it right? The elephant in the room.com. Did I hear you

Veronica Morgan: This month? We're focusing on 10 suburbs with the highest median price changes. These have been selected from houses only and include suburbs who typically nine average sales per month or more. Now we have a link in the show notes for you to take a look at two data visualizations. The first is a map which includes a detailed explanation of each suburb. And the second is a display of the price had been taken of each suburb and we'll get into why that's important as we continue. Hello, Kent,

Kent Lardner: Veronica. Hello, Chris,

Veronica Morgan: Just quickly you put this list together from the top 10 median price growth. How has that measured you comparing it against a year ago?

Kent Lardner: Yes. So it's a rolling 12 month median. And what we've done is we've taken the data as of the end of March and this year and compared it to the data as of the end of March last year,

Veronica Morgan: I'm interested about this because, you know, often we compare things against 12 months ago as well. And things like, you know, I was looking at auction clearance rates and auction, you know, numbers of registered bidders at auction, for instance. And you know, when we were comparing February against February, you know, for every 21 against February 20, that's quite normal because COVID, hadn't interrupted things. But from now on, say for the next six or eight months, are we going to be reliably able to compare, you know, any data for this, you know, the current month against a month, the same month a year?

Kent Lardner: Well, I think the sales, the answer will be yes, because the market has been fairly robust, but I think for some regions, the one that will, will really stand out will be the rental market. So I'm quite concerned about the the data, especially with a lot of the rental moratoriums, that's going to have a big impact on the data going forward, but I'm less concerned for the sales data.

Veronica Morgan: Ah, interesting, because I guess what I was wondering was, you know, we're all areas equally impacted by COVID and then are they all, you know, just doing their normal thing now, you know what I mean? So, because the difference of the impact of COVID at the time that it all hit will make a big difference to how things look now compared to then, right. Yeah.

Kent Lardner: And, and I think in and around Melbourne things were very quiet. So if you're looking at sales volumes type type data and comparing that there will be some seasonal blips because of COVID, especially in around Melbourne.

Veronica Morgan: So let's just quickly run through the top 10 list and then we'll go through them one by one in more detail, we've got topping the list, Catherine field that sort of out of Sydney number two Cali in WUA out ne Bunbury. Did you say Ken number three, Venus Bay, which is in Victoria down near well down the bottom of Victoria somewhere there, we'll get into this in more detail. As we, as we dig in Hamilton is number four, that is in Victoria. Again, any the Grampians Glen Innes that's in sort of Northwest new South Wales, isn't it? Calderwood another one in new South Wales. I don't actually know exactly where that is, but we'll get to that new Seville will that syn Queensland, sunny coast, Mosman, new South Wales, Sydney, suburban affluent Sydney, North shore suburbs, surface paradise. That's in the gold coast and Gordon, which is another it's an upper North shore Sydney suburb.

Chris Bates: It's actually the one in the ICT and

Veronica Morgan: It's not the one New South Wales that's in Gordon.

Veronica Morgan: Just ignore the fact that I don't know where Gordon is. Okay. Let's hit them one at a time Catherine field, these are median prices and we will get into whether that's reliable or not and why, and as if you've listened to any of these Sobo trends episodes, you will know that we do advocate understanding what goes into making the median data so that you can determine whether it's reliable and use full or not. So Katherine field, what's the story there?

Kent Lardner: So the median has jumped from four 90,000 a year ago to six 81. Now with the change of give or take around 39%, but it's a big, no, for me in terms of what I rely upon it because of the distribution of prices that go all the way from in that bracket of 400 to 600 K all the way out to some very large sales, large, lots up close to $4 million. So it's a very large spread of values.

Chris Bates: Ultimately what's happening here can looking at the suburb, not that many South, really. But you're right. You've got the big house and the big blocks that look McMansions really on fields. So not my cup of tea, but obviously some people like them. Then you've also got next to that orange park. So RN park is a housing development sort of house and land package, you know, area that's going nuts. And now they're spreading into the next suburb, which is Catherine field. So pretty much you you're getting all this sort of new stock mix, which is around that 600, 700 Mark mixing with the big acreages, which is those price distributions. You're talking about.

Veronica Morgan: Any of those Anchorage's being sold to developers for subdivision into smaller.

Chris Bates: Absolutely. Cause I think some of them have got on their subdivision potential. But they're also like the house pen too much money on the house to knock it down. And so you don't really want to have that big block with the housing development next to you. So there's going to be a lot of people who have overcapitalized out there where they did it all the person before them did it. Yeah, I think that's a, it's definitely going to happen. All those others are changing. It's just too much profit to be made by subdividing. Versus just sitting on a big house on a, on a big block,

Kent Lardner: Talk about big house. I'm looking at a nine bedroom listed here at the moment that's being nine bedrooms.

Veronica Morgan: Okay. So the things that skew medians in P in places like that are a release of new stock that gets sold at a higher price than older stock, the presence or the existence of acreage that potentially are those larger lifestyle blocks that might actually be getting more appeal from people saying, Oh, bugger this, I don't want to live in suburbia anymore. Maybe. And maybe that may be that's a long bow. And then also the obvious thing that can skew medians in an error is when there is a zoning change or when, you know, there are a lot of blocks sold for subdivision that get sold. You know, there's a big increase in value to those properties in a one-off hit to their value. And then they get cut into smaller lots and then sold again. So that can all play havoc with medium prices.

Kent Lardner: They can. Okay. And if you zoom out though for that area, which is bringing jelly green Valley as the essay three it's it's had a, a 6% change in median. So that's the other key thing I look for is, is there a significant divergence between the suburb change and that, that essay three, that the suburb belongs to and 6% versus 39%, that's a bit of a difference.

Veronica Morgan: Yeah. And I've had a problem with these lessons, you know, here we are putting together a lease, but we are dissecting it so you can understand these lists better, but you know, a lot of the media, they love these lists of top 10 lists in this, this same list may well appear somewhere, you know, without all this analysis. And, and then people think, Oh, ran that that's, that's the next, you know, that's the hotspot we've got to get out there before it goes any further. That's the danger, isn't it with

Kent Lardner: These bad, it's so bad and it's still happening. I'm looking at, I'm looking at a website of an investment magazine, and it's just, they're doing the, exactly the same thing. Just these random top 10 lists.

Chris Bates: One interesting thing is this is a job keeper. You know, one of the concerns with the market this year is what happens in the next few months when that all ends and what businesses can keep people on and go under, et cetera. This will be one of the hotspots where, you know, there will be potentially issues with sort of mortgage stress, et cetera. So I think this is a nice area to sort of watch over the next 12 months because it's you know, potentially if anything does happen with job keeper and there is sort of unemployment spike, these are the top areas that'll okay.

Veronica Morgan: Right. So top number one and list big warning,

Kent Lardner: W w w would not use that median at all.

Veronica Morgan: Okay. Number two, Collie. So this is the wedding WUA Bunbury.

Kent Lardner: It is. So the distribution there, it looks a lot more, a lot better behave. So at a, we've got bulk of the sales, they sit under 200 K about 49% of them sit under 200 K the next brackets that 200 K to 400 K about 44%. So pretty much all of your market sits under 400 K. The median there has shifted from 130,000 to 165,000 with about a 27% change. So I would say that one looks pretty good. The region that it belongs to is a Bunbury. That's had a 5% change over that same period.

Chris Bates: Is this the mining sort of seems to be a bit of mining out that way. Do you think it's just the, maybe they're ramping up a mine or something? I don't know the full story, but is that what you thinking?

Kent Lardner: Oh, I didn't, I didn't see that. I didn't look into that. I just I've done the zoom because you love your maps. So I was zoomed in and did the whole map thing, but I didn't look into the employment. So that would be, yeah, that would be an interesting thing to look at. Let me just have a look, unemployment rate. I got the unemploy industry healthcare and social assistance, retail trading construction. So I can't see mining there.

Veronica Morgan: That doesn't sound positive though. Those industries,

Kent Lardner: It's a common mix and find that that's, you know, either at an essay three level that the, the, the healthcare and social assistance seems to dominate so many regions, so many suburbs,

Chris Bates: There's a big, mine's a big sort of a coal mine just to the right of it. So well the East to people professional. And yeah, so, and I mean, it is quite inland. It's not really on the coast. So it's kind of one of those areas where you're going, if medians are going out, why is that? Well, it's probably just an increase in demand, not supply. It doesn't look like there's many new houses. And at that price point, it's hard to buy a new house on the 200 grand. He had to build it. So it's not a supply sort of a problem. Or so just things like an increasing demand ramping up through mining or exactly. 

Kent Lardner: Yeah, and it, you know, absorb a few of the cheaper properties there. They can move off the base pretty quickly.

Veronica Morgan: One of the things that, you know, your methodology focuses on of course is inventory levels. Now, what are the inventory levels there? And what's a normal amount of sales per month.

Kent Lardner: Yeah. So the inventory for the region for Bunbury is 6.62. So it's, yeah. Compare that to that, to the rest of the country. That's a little bit higher now. I wouldn't say that's a bad market. It's just probably a little bit more what we would be used to a couple of years ago for other markets. So I'd probably, there's a fairly balanced market, not a lot of upward pressure across the region. So there's a spike, obviously in that particular suburb. It's hard to identify the reasons why that's happening, looking at the data, especially at a regional level,

Veronica Morgan: Be alarmed about, you know, if this was to appear in anybody else's list, because they're all the errors are putting in different directions here. This one I'm, I'm sort of thinking, well, I don't know. I, I'm not clear on why the median has gone up, as you say, it's obviously demand, but why, why is there a demand? You know, I guess we have no answer for that.

Kent Lardner: No, I think too, it'd be one of those great suburbs to pull apart and say, was there a cluster of less expensive properties on the market a year ago that are no longer there? So it could be one of those compositional issues as well.

Veronica Morgan: So another reason to definitely not take these lists at face value now heading over to Venus Bay, knee one saggy,

Kent Lardner: Great name by isn't it, it sounds gorgeous. And it's a, it's a peninsula. It looks, it looks really nice. You've got water on both sides. So it's a really limited supply. Now here's the change. It went from 150,000 to 300,000.

Veronica Morgan: This should be number one, the list number three.

Kent Lardner: Yeah. I D I, it was a bit of a rant. No, I don't know why, what I've done with that. I've sorted based on something else, but across the region that this one is inline in that the region has about 2.9, three months of stock for houses. So it's a pretty tight market as is most of regional Victoria. It's been hot, hot, hot I'm about across that Gibbs lane, Southwest, the median is changed by about 7%. So again, I'd probably gravitate a little bit more to the the region, which is why I liked the essay three so much. And I, there's no way in the world, I'll be trusting the the suburb median.

Veronica Morgan: No, cause it's pretty small, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Bates: I mean, I looked at it and it's a you're right. It's probably a place you want to, you know, maybe a little coastal home to down there, if you want to get away from Melvin or something like that. It seems like nothing's really changed in a couple of years, really in price, you know, beat checks, fibro shacks, you know, all around that sort of three, 400 Mark. We're kind of selling for that maybe a little bit under two years ago. So I can't say where that a hundred percent rise in median sort of coming from that's the data. And normally there cash.

Kent Lardner: Yeah, look, there's a $1.1 million property. I'm looking at it now, but then you click me and you click one point a while there's a 1.4 million and then, you know, a few hundred majors while you got a $400,000 property. So it's a very, very tough market for it to, to obviously apply and use a median. The distribution is a little bit skewed. Most of it though, the bulk of your sales there about 90% sit under 600 K. But you do have a splattering of, of sales all the way up to move about 1% of sales are happening above 1 million at the moment.

Veronica Morgan: Now days on market is interesting because you know, the current days of market, the time it takes to sell a house is 57 and a year ago. That was 93. I'd almost love to have February figures as well. Do you know what I mean? Just to go, just to see whether it's really changed a lot. So, and I guess the role, if a rolling 12 month average does in this set of data has got all of COVID whereas a year ago doesn't have all of COVID in it, correct? Correct. So, so it's, it's gone down significantly. The days on market sort of maybe about 40% and the actual the inventory levels have gone down significantly as well, right?

Kent Lardner: Yeah. So, but again, you know, even, even though these have been filtered out based on the number of sales or average sales, trying to get close to that a hundred Mark per year, it's still two to two smaller sample for me to be comfortable with, unless there's a lot of homogeneity in that particular suburb.

Veronica Morgan: Yup. Which of course is what we seek to avoid people buying into really homogenous suburbs or, or suburbs with homogenous stock. Right. We like just purely a statistical, but I know it's exactly the sort of places we like to talk about buying in is very places it's really difficult to get, get meaningful data on anyway. So let's move on to number four, which is Hamilton and yes, it's called Glen elk, but it's not South Australia, Glen elk. It's a, [inaudible] called Glen L gray, which is yeah.

Kent Lardner: Glenelg Southern Grampians. I think most people would know the Grampians.

Veronica Morgan: Very nice part of the world. Very nice.

Chris Bates: Yeah. Well, first a weekend away with my wife actually is beautiful. Wouldn't

Veronica Morgan: Be where you are today. Without the grandparents,

Chris Bates: I took a horse riding. I think she was pretty impressed

Chris Bates: It was a very beautiful place. I mean, the Grammy is a stunning and you think of, if you're looking to escape Melbourne the grandparents, there's a lot of other content, Dallas food, you know, it's affordable tree change location. So I think that's, what's driving its prices there. I mean, can you want me to go first, but what do you think

Kent Lardner: In terms of the price distribution? It's very normal, so that that's a good sign. It's a 25% change in the median search jump from 210 K up to 263. So that's a relatively affordable area. So if, if, if it's everything you say it is in terms of beauty you can probably understand why some people might be drawn out of Melbourne to go there because it's somewhere they could afford. So across the region, it aligns a lot more neatly to, so the region of the Glen elk, Southern Grampians S3 that's jumped 17% over the last 12 months. So 23, 25% for the suburb 17% odd for the region. So it's neatly aligned, which would give me a lot more confidence.

Veronica Morgan: So, so far we're at number four and that's our most confident, how long does it take to drive there from Melbourne Greece? Cause it's on looking at the maps fair way.

Chris Bates: So, I mean, it does take about three or four hours for memory, so it's not, but you know, I guess with this COVID change, I mean three or four hours, isn't a big deal. If you can work from home and I think it is one of those areas where a lot of people in Melbourne have probably gone to on holidays, like the you know, the gradation road or, and things like that, where we can go, you know, what I'd actually love to live here. And then Melbourne was the Cobra was sort of the enabler of that. So, but it is, it's a long way. But you see, you can't really commute, but if you need to get in there, you know, every so often it's probably doable. So it's just so cheap compared to, you know, other tree change locations, you know, that Jalong the Mornington peninsula out of reach. Even maybe Ballarat's maybe a bit more expensive or Dallas-Fort or Casa mine. So and he's one of those pockets that yeah, people might, might want to go to just for the affordability reasons. Interesting.

Kent Lardner: Certainly a big mix of housing styles and standards,

Chris Bates: Beautiful old houses, you know, that's, you know, like those sort of houses you'd love to be paying you're buying in the inner ring of Melbourne are out there and on these sort of quieter older streets. So it's kind of like an orange, I guess, in town.

Veronica Morgan: Yeah. Yeah. Glen Innes. So back in new South Wales, this is up, you know, direction of Tenterfield and Inverell, and it's certainly, you know, up Northwest bidding land 

Kent Lardner: Pretty freezing at the moment.

Veronica Morgan: Yep. Sorry. Okay. So happening there what's

Kent Lardner: What's yeah. So I'm zooming out, I'll start at the high level, the, the region it belongs to is Inverell Tenterfield DSA three, that's had a 9% change over that 12 month period. So this particular suburb has had a 29% change. So it's jumped from one 90 K to 245,000. And when you look at the price distribution here at, it does look quite normal. So that would be one where I could say, yeah, I can live with this one. I could live with Luke with saying it's grown by close to close to 30%.

Veronica Morgan: Cleanliness is on the sort of new England highway, right. A bit North of Amada. Yeah.

Kent Lardner: Yeah. If you drew, if you kind of draw a line inland from Grafton you go up over the Rangers. Yeah.

Veronica Morgan: So is there any reason to think that Glen Innes in Inn has something magical about it? You know, is there any re East the whole region benefiting or is, is there something that's, do we know of something that's happened in Glen Innes that might've precipitated this?

Kent Lardner: I'm not aware, Chris, what about you?

Chris Bates: Oh, I think I've got some sort of Stonehenge thing there Avenue, maybe the rushing to the tourism there or something, but I can't think of anything, you know, it's really a grizzly country town. I mean, it's not, it's a long way from anywhere. And so I just think, why would this sort of country town sort of boom versus, you know, I just haven't got the answers to be honest. I was looking at, I suppose, scratching my head. It's not it doesn't really make sense. Why in one year things have jumped so much. Usually that's only when there's limited stock and a massive increase in demand. So I guess someone from Glen, if you're listening, tell us if something's changing on the ground there, because we don't know from this, from our seats.

Kent Lardner: Interesting though, when you look at the house conditions the inventory levels are above eight months. So that would tell me that across the region, there's a bit of a slight downward pressure at the moment. So who knows what might be happening there. We might end up with a flurry of people exiting the market trying to cash in who knows. But it's just some really odd data through the region at the moment.

Chris Bates: It is similar to grandparents, a little bit like the sort of mountain ranges and, you know, place to sort of go away. So maybe it is just one of those other sort of affordability locations where people are like, look, let's just go and buy a house and we'll create an internet business and live cheaply, et cetera. So maybe that's sort of what's going forward at the moment.

Kent Lardner: I think the biggest employer is agriculture, forestry and fishing at 19% for the, for the [inaudible] fishing in land like group. But it's just a cluster. So yeah. Agriculture and food.

Chris Bates: Yeah. It must be a farm's fishing on a, on a paddock or something or some, one river we will fly fishing. But anyway, yeah,

Veronica Morgan: But I mean, all these cities, I mean, these are, these are, some of these episodes are more fun than others, I guess, because you know, here we are looking at pure data and, and revealing the weakness of just looking at pure data, you know, and where none of us are experts in this particular area. So this that's why we don't know the answers. And it actually shows why you do need to be an expert and have absolute local Northridge in order to be able to make calls on these sorts of things. So you know, so you might listen to this, go, what the hell am I listening to these bullies guys don't know anything, but this is, this is actually the point. Okay. Hitting, going through Calderwood. So this is down near Kiama Shellharbour.

Kent Lardner: It is this one's an interesting one. So if you go to the the abs quick stats from not that long ago, there were only 58 dwellings back in 2016. So what's happened here is now we did a little, I did a little bit more homework on this one than in us, but yeah, this one is one of those classics where some blocks of land have been carved up and some new stocks being built

Chris Bates: And a lot of stock is potentially gonna to come out here. So it's in the sort of Albion park area of Willingong as Sydney sort of, you know people can move outside of Sydney a little bit more. That's one of the pockets in Woolongong where there's heaps of flat land perfect for developers to sort of cut up. And so, you know, this is, I think what's happened here is there's a subject called North Macquarie, which is next to quarter water if you're from where my map was showing. But it's getting pulled into sort of Calderwood. So I've sat in North Macquarie sort of housing development that's really which is neighboring the Albion park, which is making these stats look amazing because the median has gone up, but really it's just land getting caught up with very small numbers. So

Veronica Morgan: Yeah. Try selling one of your old houses there and making the same sort of gain.

Kent Lardner: Well, there's still many to sell,

Veronica Morgan: Even if he did though, because that'd be all compared with the new stuff. Right.

Kent Lardner: It's just, it's, it's a really interesting small area. But it's had a cluster of sales that are drawing up now,

Chris Bates: Some of the older house, the, the house would be making pretty big gains. I imagine because they're massive value courageous on insulin, sort of their back. That's a pretty good spot to live. I think if, you know, you've got access to the South coast, pretty good access back into Sydney as well. So you have got that sort of right down more towards Albion park blocks getting caught up. But as soon as you sort of go back up into the mountains, a little bit big homes on blocks in the hinterlands. So

Veronica Morgan: Did that does call the ward encompass both types of property. I mean, because I know that you're heading up into the Southern Highlands there, right. To Robinson and places like that, which is, you know, as beautiful. And but is that covered in color?

Kent Lardner: Well, there there's some stock anchorages up into the, up towards Mount Marie that I can see here. So there's a property there at the moment at 1.2 million, and then you go down to your, your typical new specie type house your typical four bedroom, two bathroom type properties. So yeah, it looks like a really nice nice suburb. There's some, some, some of them have got some lovely views up to the ranges there. But again, I guess the, the, the whole meaningful, the reason for the show today was to say what I trust the median in terms of a suburb growth rate at 64%. No I wouldn't.

Veronica Morgan: Yeah, yeah. Yes. Okay. Ah, dude, we're not trusting many of them. I have to say, this is just the, the why not to trust the media and show. Noosaville so up in the sunshine coast this is some very established, but is there a lot of new development going on up there?

Kent Lardner: There's a splattering of stuff. It's an interesting distribution. Cause you do have a number of sales that sit above 2 million. So you've got those on the water or views of the water and then the rest and the rest, the average around the rest is, you know, the one 800 to 1 million, 27% of your sales are sitting at 800 to one mill, but then you've got, you know, you've got 1% of your sales, overfilled mill. So it's a very spread distribution with a, almost two markets here with a, you know, a market around that 3 million Mark and a market around the 1 million Mark.

Veronica Morgan: Mm. Yeah. And that, it's interesting because of course you've got it's like any beats, so suburb, we were talking about this, we interviewed Michael Mauro from Byron Bay. That's an episode coming up soon. And we talked about, you know, where you've got a main road separating, you know, beach side properties and non beach side properties and the massive big sort of haves and haves nots really. And there's a lot of haves and haves nots haves and haves nots came and say, it hasn't have nots up in that part of the world. And, and certainly maybe not, Noosaville quite so much this along the river, but like certainly Newser itself and obviously Noosa waters and places like that. You've got very expensive waterfront homes or canal front homes. Yeah. So, so do we rely on the median for the lower price properties?

Kent Lardner: All right. Look, I wouldn't touch it at the suburb level. I bet at the, at the essay three region, which is new. So it's, it's grown by 18% and the, and the region does look representative and I would trust the media in that, you know, for the, for that essay three region, it's been a big growth year

Veronica Morgan: And that would make sense, wouldn't it? Yeah.

Kent Lardner: Yeah. There's been a lot of people wanting to get to get out. And I think a lot of the people from Melbourne obviously just bypass new South Wales altogether and lane straight Noosaville.

Veronica Morgan: Yeah. Newsreel, hasn't got a lot of new stock sort of going back to your other question. It's, you know, the fringes of

Chris Bates: Noosa, definitely starting to add some more housing estates that you starting to Nashville is bordering on sort of the heads, like are the, you know, you want to be, I guess. So, and then the other side you've got sort of sunshine beach and sunrise beach. And so there's not that much land up there available if you look at Noosa heads, sunshine beach and Noosaville and they're not really building any more, there's a lot of commercial in Noosaville, which I always get a little bit apprehensive saying if I'm going to buy into or think of, you know, talk about a market because commercial doesn't always stay profitable to stay commercial.

Veronica Morgan: And you mean that sort of light industrial type buildings you're talking about,

Chris Bates: Like, you know you know, maybe mechanics or, you know, just warehouses those type of places if there's more people moving to Noosa, which obviously they probably is who's to say some of those don't get knocked down, apartments, townhouses, et cetera. And so you just gotta be careful buying around anywhere where there's commercial sort of white spots. I call them where if you look at the map, you see all these little houses and you see these little white spots, they're the the commercial areas.

Veronica Morgan: It's a tip for young players.

Kent Lardner: I like a lot of the houses I'm looking at here. What was that? Sorry. All fires too

Veronica Morgan: Case in point here. Okay. So right. So we might like that area. Yeah, definitely. Maybe I think too, I mean, it, he's a bit of a no brainer that you know Victorians and new South Wales people do like the sunshine coast. And I think even Brisbane, vegans, you know, they like the sunshine coast as well. It's very much that sort of area, it'd be like the Northern beaches of in Sydney, you know, where if people can avoid a commute, they would love to live there. You know? So I think that sort of makes sense. All right. Number eight on our list, down into Sydney, one of Sydney's Mo more expensive suburbs, Mosman, Mossman, or Mosman, depending on whether you live there or whether you don't live there. I can actually never remember, which is the right one to say,

Kent Lardner: It's it's I got a lot of people there. That's a really interesting thing. I always thought they'd only be a handful of, of, of sales, but when you look at the, the Mosman suburb on the abs quick stats, it's saying 28,000 people, but it's including places like Balmoral and Clifton gardens in the count. So, but it's, it's, you know, when you're counted up from a property perspective, it's saying, this is again, the census data 13 over 13,000 properties. So that's a big suburb

Veronica Morgan: Trying to look in your, I think there's a little glitch actually in the website for the price segmentation part. Oh, no, it isn't. So you hit the big arrow. Yeah.

Kent Lardner: Well, at the top it's it's, it's all over for. So it's kind of, my scale is just falls off my scale.

Chris Bates: I think you've got to pretty much say this is a pretty good bet as number of sales. And you can really say the appetite, but people do take advantage of low rates. And finally do that upgrade. I think in renovation factors probably be here as well. I imagine if you drive around Mossman there are lots of people doing knock down rebuild big rhinos, et cetera, and that all flows into medium prices if they sell. And so yeah, I think there's a pretty clear one that people are taking on vantage of low rates and finally doing that upgrade or doing a big renovation.

Veronica Morgan: There's there's also, and the thing is with [inaudible], there's a lot of flog family homes, you know, and it's not like, you know, say in Balmain for instance, where you've got lots and lots of workers, cottages, and terraces scattered around whatever. And then you've got a few family homes and there's huge demand for those family homes by people that don't want to leave the peninsula in Mosman there's, there's loads of  family homes all the time, you know, because everything's sort of at a certain size or price point. And so there's, it's more homage even though it's very established, it's, it's more homogenous. Shall we say, even though, and also you've got Balmoral slopes and you've got some incredibly expensive  properties with Harbor views, but still you've got a lot of streets with, you know, double fronted Federation homes that have been renovated or whatever.  and so it is, it is, and there's no new development per se, you know, there's that renovation.  but there certainly aren't releasing house lots there. So yeah, I mean, I guess it's got that, all that, all the hallmarks of being a reliable, where the median is, is probably more reliable, but like you say that what is built into that is the improvements on properties, individual properties.

Chris Bates: Yeah. Most spins got a very good NIMBY mentality. I think they got a, a, I was a new Wooly's going in and don't quote me on this one, but I'm pretty sure that the local community got Woolworths to not go ahead, basically. So you know, the NIMBY mentality there is super strong and that's stopping any type of development and even, you know, maybe there's a few sort of downsides or apartments getting built, you know, scattered around, but very little changes in Mosman keeps it sort of, yeah,

Kent Lardner: I wouldn't touch the median at all here. It's just too spread. And you know, the distribution is very hard to, to play with. So I wouldn't be going near it, even though it says it's jumped up from 3.4 up to 4.3, 5 million 20%, 27% change. I wouldn't be buying that at all. I do maps of the region and what's the region telling us. Yeah. And just zooming down to that. So the house median for the North Sydney Mosman essay three as a 3% change, and that's off a high base though, he says, yeah, the median for that, for that area is 4.3. Now

Veronica Morgan: It, the median, you know, we talked about many, many times distribution is, is all the composition of the median is, is gotta be highly questioned. Something that we look at when we price properties to say, well, what does a median for, you know, might be a three bedroom house in a suburb. What has it done over the last three months, in three months before that? And so on, because we just sort of looking to see if there, if there are reliable patterns in that or not, sometimes there are sometimes they're not. But if you look at an individual property and this is where like core logic's hedonic index comes in, where they're basically trying to work out a way to compare, like with like, so an Apple with an Apple and orange with an orange. And so, you know, if these, you know, three bedrooms, 70 tach Federation, home Edwardian cottage with parking that had been renovated in 10 years ago, and that one very similar to our property sold, you know, over a period of time, that's how they sort of measure market movement. I don't, I honestly don't know how the nuts and bolts of that works, but, you know, certainly when we're looking at pricing of property, we look to that sort of individual evidence of this property versus that property, this sold, then this sold. Now, this is the difference. That to me, is a good indication of what the market's doing. How do you approximate that all you know, ha how do you make decisions with data given that you need that sort of localize understanding?

Kent Lardner: I think when you're applying that a general perspective on, on any hedonic stall index, a neat, a neat way to describe it is if an AVM struggles in the location for all the same reasons the ABM would struggle. So would an hedonic index. So that's, that's, that's how I would think that's how I would think about it.

Veronica Morgan: So it really does come down to the local knowledge.

Kent Lardner: I think the best way to approach these is, again, if you can zoom out to the region, you're just live with the region. If you want to go deep into the suburb, pick a number of properties that you're comfortable doing, a desktop appraisal on. And then what you do is you do a retrospective on them. So you pick a large enough sample that you're comfortable with, lock yourself away for a few hours and then do a retrospective appraisal on those same properties as of 12 months ago takes it takes a long time. And then, yeah, it's hard, you know, value is find it really hard. Yeah.

Chris Bates: Well, value is dynamic much time on their hands. For a lot of them, you know, maybe in most men you get paid a lot more for evaluation than you would in some other suburbs, but a lot of value is, have to get in and get out. Right. Cause they've only got 30 minutes and they're only getting paid a couple hundred bucks to, to sort of do their report if that, so yeah, I think what sort of Veronica would be doing for her clients would be a lot more than what a value would do. And actually going back and comparing sort of, you know, pass hours that are really comparable, not actually just any sort of Sal in suburb. And it does take a long time. We had a client and she asked me, so what do you think offers should be on this property?

Chris Bates: I said, well, that is where you need a buyer's agent. You know, you need to, this is hours and hours of work and, you know, understanding of the vendor situation and what else is on the market and all these things that you know, just because you've saw that a sale of a property was this two years ago or that event, you know, they might want to make their money back or whatever it is. Like that's all a bit pointless. It's really a lot of research and a lot of speaking to the agent. So it's not easy. Hey,

Veronica Morgan: Just on that too. I mean, it's, it's particularly not easy at the moment we measure the differential between, you know, our pricing research, which, you know, would I went to do an episode on this a while back to know how we go about doing this. And, and then I measure the difference between, you know, what we can see based on recent sales and adjusting them according to market movements. So that really, it should say that as of yesterday, that's really what the price should be now on average properties that are going selling pre auction or they're selling sort of off market, which is fewer and fewer of those around, there's a 5% premium on top of that. And if it goes to auction, it's sort of about five and a half percent, and it's pretty much double at 11% over that if it goes to auction.

Veronica Morgan: So, so then you go, I go, that's great. We should be making offers pre auction offers on everything, but it's not that simple. And you know, you talk about why do you need a buyer's agent? It's a, this is a friend of a friend of mine who is not buying in our area. They're buying up central coast and they've looked into buyer's agents, but they haven't really convinced, you know, they've met anyone that they think is any good. And so out there they are, they've got no idea. And, you know, they want to pick my brains about making offers prior to auction. I'm like, I can't just, you know, there's no blanket rule. You know, you, you have to, you need guidance every step of the way you need interpretation and insights in terms of what's actually happening. And whether there's a chance and whether it isn't a chance and what's the right premium to pay and whether it's a good property or whether it isn't a good property.

Veronica Morgan: Now I know that not all buyer's agents do that as well. But you know, that, that, you know, the real of it. And then they said to me, Oh yeah, but there's no off-market properties on the market anymore. So therefore there's no real value in using a buyer's agent. I'm like, ah, well, that's the thing. It's that those insights and, well, there are some, but it's still, there are less than they were before, but it's the insights and the guidance every step of the way where the value of a good buyer's agent is now not about getting you an off market property for God's sake.

Chris Bates: Absolutely. There's not one rule, right? There's not like yeah. Make an offer on a Friday two weeks into the campaign and 5% of other guide and give them a 24 hour turn around and that's it try that it's yeah. Every single case is different. And sometimes you hold it back to really close to the auction and you try to get a pre-market or you go to auction, or, you know, you go start low and work your way up, or you go in with a knockout offer. Like there's so many different things that you'd probably approach it. Which is, you only got to know that if you really speak to the agent, I reckon Veronica is that of if any, have trust with them, for them to tell you things that you probably shouldn't

Veronica Morgan: That's exactly right. I mean, I'll give you an example of a property that was quoted $3 million, right. And this you know, the agent was pretty forthcoming with, you know, why he prospered there, et cetera, et cetera. Now, when I looked at this particular suburb, there's only four other properties that sold between three and $4 million in the past two years. Right. So I'm like, and they were all way bigger and better than this one way bigger and better. And there was one that sold over $4 million in that two year period that was even bigger and better again. Right. So I'm like, you know what, if yes, in this market, it's probably going to go over three, but that is really remarkable given the land size of this house. And so, you know, if we were going to make an offer, you know, clients might've been prepared to pay, you know, they might've loved it so much.

Veronica Morgan: They might go look, I'm prepared to pay three, three, or maybe even three, four. And it's, you know, it sounds ridiculous, but that's crazy. And I'll make that offer. Right. And I'm like, I can't justify it. I can't find any evidence to say that that's the right price to pay, but you know, if you want to pay it, you know, you'd go in with an offer prior, except that every, every agent had been through this house and I'd spoken to a number of agents, including the agent that actually did get the listing. And everybody in the market knew the vendor was one to three and a half. So even if we had gone in with what looked like an amazing offer, three, three, or three, four pre pre auction, the vendors, weren't going to entertain it anyway, because we, everyone knew they wanted more and you know, it's to watch it. And it actually goes to 3.9, you know? So it's like, it needs a willing vendor, a person willing to actually entertain what seems to be a reasonably good offer in advance, you know? There you go. You know, so who's going to make sense of that. And, and I can't, I couldn't actually find any justification for it to sell over three, even though we knew it was going to,

Chris Bates: It's hard though, right. Because you've got to be saying to your client you know, I know that you love it, but it, what, so in the last two years is very few four properties. I think you said they're all better than this and they're going to be paying more than that. So how much more than that is actually, how much has the market move, or we don't know, cause there's not many comparables and you're going to be basically buying ahead of the market potentially because you're going to need more comparable sales after you to justify your valuation. Exactly. And so this person they're paying three nine if, for example, a better property than that bigger land, nicer house sold for 37, how's that person going to be feeling. And how's that valuation going to stack up is their valuation. Now anywhere three, four, if that's a bigger Lance.

Chris Bates: So they were very dangerous playing in, you know, in a market where there's not many comparables in your sort of setting a new standard, because if you need a refinance or you need to sell and other let's say in six months time or two years' time, a divorce happens and they say, I want to sell. And they go, well, he paid three night, but last year, six months ago, this one sold for three seven, and it's better than yours, yours, anywhere, three 60 level. And so you've gotta be super careful in that situation. And we're saying that now, like I've seen some prices and like, how is that even possible? That is a poor street. It's gone up nearly a hundred percent in two years. It was near me. And it just doesn't make sense. And so if people are now basing their decisions today on that sale, I just think that they're crazy because that's how it should never be anywhere near that high when you know the suburbs. So yeah.

Veronica Morgan: And then you get the people go, Oh, well, the market, you know, the market is telling you these stories. And it's like, yes, but I also have been around for downturns and I know what the market tells us then too. And so, you know, it's like, you want to be stuck there with your pants around your ankles and go knock yourself out there. There are some properties well worth pushing yourself for there's no doubt about it. But yeah, it's a dangerous territory,

Chris Bates: Low listings, right? So low listings in this situation. Whereas especially in that last couple of months, there was not that many and see big prices on low listings. It's not enough to say this is the new level, right? If it was 10 properties selling at a big price, you've got, okay, well, there's quite a lot of demand and a lot of supply, but I think some of the process of separation, they just thought, Oh, I'd want to see these maintain for another three or four months to see that this is actually where things are going to do. Or it's just been stupid desperation or a few chips

Veronica Morgan: And back to Mosman. So MOSFET is a suburb where you've got a lot of properties. You know what you see, you know, the majority souls over 4 million, I can't, you gotta, you gotta move your bar up. So we can

Kent Lardner: That last time I was, I was trapped in 1990 before, and that was enough. But you know, I do that. I've got to build one specifically for half a dozen suburbs.

Veronica Morgan: Yeah. I know it's a play, it's a punish isn't there. But so the thing is though, if you're buying into somewhere like Mosman, you know, that there are other lots of other properties around a similar about price point, right? So whereas this one's the, the, the unicorn of that suburb and, and then you got the question, Oh, well if there are others that are larger in the air and they sold, would they also get that sort of price? And so, but that's a biggie, that's a water sort of thing. And, and the problem is they're not selling. And so therefore you don't have that confidence you know, to, to push over that, that level. And it's certainly not an upper suburb where, you know, in, in that process distribution graph, you know, it's a tiny little, tiny little bar that's got over 3 million that, you know, whereas a big bar, you know, between say two and two and a half and one half and two, alright, surface paradise, number nine.

Kent Lardner: I want to go to surface let's do it

Veronica Morgan: Really houses, not apartments houses, not apart. Yeah.

Kent Lardner: Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's jumped from 1.1 up to 1.57 at a median level for surface paradise. The essay three region that it belongs to is also called surface paradise, which makes it easier for me to remember, which is but the region itself has really surged as well. So there's been a 27% change in the median sale price there. So it's a hot, hot market across the region. I would be comfortable in accepting that regional change that it all the indicators side, the market is that hot. But I wouldn't, I wouldn't go down and say, it's jumped by 40, you know close to 42%. And that's more a result of the price distribution. So if you look at the surface paradise distribution, you've got about 10% of your sales are over four mil. You've got a few blips in the data there. Sometimes you get some odd ball, you know, data records that flow through. But yeah, by and large it's it's a hot market. I don't say it would be as hot as 41% change, but certainly I would support the region.

Chris Bates: You make pot to live, right. I think jet ski sales must be going well though as well. Cause obviously you've got all your canals and but yeah, it's, it's pretty much all the houses are on the canal and there is little sort of inland sort of properties, which will be the probably lower ones. Do you think that the median is just that a lot of the more expensive houses are selling as a percentage versus the cheaper houses and that's just, you know, pushing the median up that way. Okay.

Kent Lardner: Which is always the case with these suburbs that have that big, broad spread and waterways, it's always the case.

Chris Bates: Yeah. So I wonder if the inland properties, like the ones that aren't on the canals with the sort of lifestyle benefit of living there selling as strongly as the ones that are just, you know,

Kent Lardner: Yeah, it's interesting too. This particular market, I had an eye on this one because I was worried about the unemployment rate because of so many people working in tourism. But it just hasn't impacted the housing market at all,

Veronica Morgan: But is there a migration? There

Chris Bates: Are probably actually,

Veronica Morgan: Mm, because, you know, and, and along the lines of our chat with Michael Mauro from Byron Bay as well, which is coming up in a couple of weeks, but you know, it was the people migrating to places like this that you know, potentially working from home and, or working remotely on a higher income or bringing, bringing dollars that they've sold up in a capital city, for instance, to there. And they've got in some cases, stronger buying power than the locals, you know? And so, and they're going to go, they're going to gravitate to the properties with the views, with the, the water access. And, and so that's gonna pull the median up, isn't it? Yes, absolutely.

Chris Bates: Absolutely. And they're going there with Melbourne and Sydney glasses and putting, you know, could it be, if I get this for 1.5 and Sydney is, and so I think you know, as prices in Sydney, Melbourne houses go up, then a lot of that cashing money, half the people who do decide to leave, you know, flows into sort of other lifestyle. And this probably would be one, if you were looking to escape Melbourne,

Veronica Morgan: What is rather interesting here is that, you know, we're talking houses in this episode. I mean, that's how you you've selected these, but your, if anyone wants to get in and play with the suburb trends top 10 price change suburbs map that we've got the link in the show notes you know, I'm looking at unit sales. And so, so every sales volume is 108 units a month. That's a lot and currently 571 units listed for sale, which has decreased from six 81, 12 months ago. And unit sales, you know, the ma median, once again, it's a dangerous thing, but it's actually saying the media has gone up 7%. Whereas, you know, when you look at some of the data on, on losses, on unit sales at the gold coast in particular, is features fairly highly on that list.

Kent Lardner: Yeah. I I'd like to certainly like to look at how much new stock may have come on as well, which often throws things out in the unit space

Veronica Morgan: Once again. And it's scary, isn't it? Cause spruikers will grab that and go units are on the rise. It's like, they're not, not necessarily, you know, anyway. Okay. Number 10, the last worm Gordon, which is not in Sydney, it is in the eighties.

Kent Lardner: ICT. Yeah. Well, everything in the ICT is boiling hot. This one's changed from 539,000 as a social media. And about a year ago or a year ago to six 75 K. So that's at the suburb level. And when we zoom out a little bit I'm looking at the inventory level for the region. It's 1.08 months. So effectively if no other property was listed for sale, you'd have no stock, no houses available to buy. And just over four weeks time, it's really amazing. Now [inaudible] region that it belongs to, that's increased by 12%, but there's no up in the act it's hot. He's going there. Is it migration? Well, I spoke to somebody who moved there from Sydney because he identified a really good school. So exited Sydney to move there for his son

Chris Bates: And Canberrans love Canberra. So and then may lived in the city and then moving back, I think I was looking at this one. There's not much new supply, which is always a good sign. It is far from Canberra though. Let's talk right on the Southern end. But when you sort of do a bit of a street view and you go for that, you know, scopes, pretty nice views of mountain ranges and things like that. And lots of older sort of, you know, maybe eighties sort of estates on bigger blocks and houses. That'll probably tidy up quite nicely. And it was a bit cheaper. You know, the medium was only around 500 and 700. I think what that's doing is people would say, Oh, I can't afford those suburbs closer to the city. I still want to see him a lifestyle. Gordon's a nice place. It's only 20 minutes from town. Why don't we check that out? And so I think that's just picking back off the other suburbs in Canberra, getting more expensive and just the ripple effect, pushing out to a nicer outer suburb where there isn't much lots of new stock happening. A lot of that's in the North of that.

Veronica Morgan: So we've really in this 10 suburbs, we've pretty much covered almost all the issues. You know, we've got, we've got ripple effects, we've got oversupply that subdivision we've got we've got high price brackets and family homes and we've got affordability. You know, you've got everything, haven't we,

Kent Lardner: This bag you've got Corona virus

Veronica Morgan: Coronavirus all over it. You've got sea change, tree change. You've got, you've got distorted data. We've got the works. So what are we going to do next month,

Kent Lardner: Chris? What would you like? What's on your wishlist.

Chris Bates: Let's do that. What you just spoke about before Ken. So do the listings of properties that were ex rentals in different sort of parts.

Veronica Morgan: Can we do that? And then,

Chris Bates: Yeah. And then also what percentage of those suburbs already owner-occupied yep. And then medians, because I think what you'll find is a nice trend where suburbs that already have got higher and, or occupier rates and a higher listing of ex rentals are basically going to become even more owner-occupier rights and do housing, not apartments because ultimately I maybe could still include apartments in some areas, but yeah.

Kent Lardner: Yeah. I think with the vacancy data that I look at the vacancy statistic is roll together, but I can pull out houses that or houses that specifically houses that are, and I've matched them up to their, whether they were an extra rental. And what we can do is we can do, do you want to do it at a suburb level? Do you want to do it at a regional level?

Chris Bates: All my got rages, but it was like, I might be high. Immedion's like, you know, more expensive areas. Cause what is basically what's happening is if owner occupies a vine, his investment houses, the rental stock of houses is dropping because yeah, no investor wants to buy these houses because they're too expensive. And so every year it's getting harder.

Kent Lardner: Yeah. I'd say that sums up worrying. Yeah.

Chris Bates: Yeah. so, or even Eastern suburbs, or even in a West, who's going to buy a $2 million house in the inner West as an investor.

Kent Lardner: So it's, it's landlords cashing in.

Chris Bates: Yeah. They're cashing in, but what they're also doing is creating a longer term now, starting to credit a housing problem where people go, I can't afford to buy, but I can't afford to rent a house.

Kent Lardner: Correct. I've got a very good one too. That's happening? That's regional areas.