Homes are selling fastest in Canberra, Sydney and Hobart with some of the cities’ suburbs averaging just 17 days on the market.
And houses, rather than units, continue to be snapped up at lightning speed with six of the 15 fastest-selling suburbs in Canberra, five in Hobart and four in Sydney, according to data from real estate sales and renting platform Real Estate Investar, a subsidiary of real estate technology outfit PropTech Group.
Camden South—one of the southernmost suburbs of Sydney—was the fastest-selling suburb in Australia with houses changing hands at an average of just 14 days.
Units in Manly Vale, a suburb of northern Sydney, are also transacting at record speed with buyers picking up studio and one-bedroom apartments in an average of 18 days.
In Canberra, the suburbs of Gordon, Wanniassa, Dunlop and Holt averaged 18 days on the market while Hobart’s New Town, Norwood, Howrah and West Hobart averaged just 17 days.
PropTech Group managing director Joe Hanna said the data had allowed homebuyers to gather a clearer picture of macro market dynamics to understand which investment class promised the best returns as property prices nationally began to fall.
“The average time on the market in New South Wales’ fastest-selling suburb is 14 days while time on the market in the fastest-selling suburbs in all the other states is significantly longer,” Hanna said.
“For Queensland it is 21 days, in Victoria 25 days, and in Western Australia it is 41 days.”
The study, which analysed market listings over the 12 months through June 2022, found that 90 per cent of the property in the 50 fastest-selling suburb categories were houses.
Fastest selling suburbs
| Rank | Suburb | Dwelling type | Median price | Growth 12 months | Median rent | Growth 12 months |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Camden South, NSW | House (3) | $764,500▲ | 19.4%▲ | $500▲ | 7.5%▲ |
| 2 | Gordon, ACT | House (3) | $727,500▲ | 23.5%▲ | $565▲ | 15.3%▲ |
| 3 | New Town, Tas | House (3) | $945,000▲ | 37.9%▲ | $570▲ | 3.6%▲ |
| 4 | Horsley, NSW | House (3) | $730,000▲ | 23.7%▲ | $550▲ | 12.2%▲ |
| 5 | Norwood, Tas | House (3) | $499,000▲ | 25.0%▲ | $460▲ | 15.0%▲ |
| 6 | Manly Vale, NSW | House (2) | $975,000▲ | 14.7%▲ | $630▲ | 5.0%▲ |
| 7 | Manly Vale, NSW | Unit (1) | $700,000▲ | 7.6%▲ | $505▲ | 1.0%▲ |
| 8 | Howrah, Tas | House (3) | $725,000▲ | 33.0%▲ | $525▲ | 7.1%▲ |
| 9 | West Hobart, Tas | House (3) | $962,500▲ | 28.3%▲ | $625▲ | 8.6%▲ |
| 10 | Wanniassa, ACT | House (3) | $820,000▲ | 36.6%▲ | $600▲ | 7.1%▲ |
^Source: Real Estate Investar - August 2022
Buyers continued to opt for bigger homes, in keeping with the change in preference for buyers throughout the pandemic. Sixty per cent of the top 50 are three-bedroom homes, 14 per cent are four-bedroom homes, 8 per cent are two-bedroom homes, and just 4 per cent are one-bedroom homes.
In Victoria, four-bedroom houses in the suburb of Langwarrin were the fastest-selling property type, spending an average of 25 days on the market.
In Queensland, the fastest-selling homes are two-bedroom houses in Gympie, which disappear from the market after an average of just 21 days while three-bedroom houses in Hamersley were the fastest selling in Western Australia with 41 days on the market.
At the other end of the spectrum are suburbs such as Deakin, in the ACT, where it takes an average of more than 100 days to sell a property, and Brooklyn, Melbourne, Australia’s slowest-selling suburb at 120 days.
Home prices have surged throughout the pandemic, up 22.1 per cent alone in 2021, with buyers during the pandemic generally preferring “lifestyle” features such as more space and lower-density areas on the coast or in suburbs where housing lots are larger and there are technology links enabling work from home.
Some of the biggest gains through the upswing were in areas not typically characterised as high-end housing markets, such as Maraylya, about 50km north-west of Sydney’s central business district.
Market activity is now reversing at a rapid pace due in part to interest rate expectations moving sharply higher, rising mortgage rates and higher home prices dampening affordability.
Some suburbs that posted the biggest gains are facing double-digit drops as fears about the pandemic are replaced by growing concerns around rising inflation and falling stockmarkets.
Expectations are for interest rates to move sharply higher, with the cash rate possibly ending the year above 2 per cent, forcing prospective buyers to face higher borrowing costs.
Auction volumes have also fallen, and clearance rates have dropped off as buyers regain the upper hand in negotiations and the fear of missing out subsides.
Despite this, rental properties are being snatched up faster than ever before, as the number of days listed on the market hits a historic low. This has been made worse amid tightening market conditions, with the number of homes available to rent has been falling since the pandemic began.
