Bargain-hunting buyers have flocked to the nation’s housing hotspots, where skyrocketing demand for affordable homes has caused property prices to explode.
New data from PropTrack has revealed the suburbs where property values jumped most in 2024, with waves of buyers snapping up homes in Australia’s cheapest suburbs – in turn lighting a rocket under house prices in those areas.
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Several of the top-performing NSW suburbs for both houses and units were located in the Tweed Heads region. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
Despite much-anticipated interest rate cuts failing to materialise last year, plenty of value-seeking buyers were still out in force in 2024, especially in suburbs where homes could be purchased for less than $500,000.
Many of those affordable suburbs recorded some of the highest price growth last year, suggesting this year’s crop of cheap suburbs could follow suit.
Analysis of several metrics – including annual price growth, buyer demand and how quickly a listed property takes to sell – has uncovered the most sought-after suburbs and the regions that could be next to boom.
The data showed high interest rates have pushed many buyers towards affordable pockets, especially in regional Australia, where it is still possible to purchase a home without committing to eye-watering mortgage repayments.
But the analysis also revealed some surprising locations experiencing a surge in buyer interest, indicating these sought-after suburbs could be in for a big year ahead.
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The data uses PropTrack’s automated valuation model (AVM) to determine a suburb’s median property value.
The suburbs with the biggest jumps in values were mostly found across Perth, Adelaide and regional Queensland, especially Townsville.
PropTrack senior economist Angus Moore said Australia’s extremely challenged housing-affordability landscape meant buyers were more likely to look in areas where homes were low priced.
House values in Vincent, a suburb of Townsville, rose 39% last year. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
“The cities where we’re seeing really strong growth are the more affordable ones,” Mr Moore said.
“Perth and Adelaide in particular have seen double digit growth in the past year, with Perth up nearly 20%.”
“You can expect to see a lot of really strong performing suburbs in more affordable areas, and that’s true even within larger cities as well.”
Where home prices rose the most in 2024
The rapid rise in interest rates in the past three years meant buying a home had become a lot less affordable, Mr Moore said, influencing the areas in which buyers were searching.
“In that environment some buyers will be looking perhaps a bit further afield at more affordable areas and suburbs than they might have otherwise.”
Topping the list for annual house-price growth with a whopping 47.6% jump in home values was Rangeway, a suburb of Geraldton in Western Australia.
Even after such a rapid increase, the suburb’s median house price is $267,000 – almost a third of the cost of a typical home in Perth.
Values in nearby Spalding also rose at a fast pace, climbing 39% to a median price of $332,000.
Rangeway was the suburb with the fastest house price growth last year. In 2023, it was Australia’s cheapest suburb. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
But it was Townsville that dominated the list of suburbs where prices grew fastest last year, with some of the city’s most affordable suburbs – including Vincent, Heatley, Cranbrook, Rasmussen and Condon –taking off.
Though values rose by more than 35% in these suburbs, a median-priced home could still be purchased for less than $500,000.
Townsville has recently been on the radar of property investors seeking high-yielding assets, as well as people relocating for work, with its unofficial status as Australia’s new “army capital” expected to further grow its population.
The median house value in the Townsville suburb of Heatley reached $458,000 after a 37% increase last year. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
These factors, as well as the rise of buyers agents purchasing for interstate investors, have put pressure on the city’s housing market, Explore Property Munro & Co. agent Jools Munro said.
She said investors were typically seeking houses in the most affordable suburbs, but were starting to shift focus to the unit market.
“We have never seen the volume of investor phone calls as we have now,” she said.
“Towards the end of last year we were barely selling to anyone else but investors, but our locals have risen to the challenge. They’re tired of missing out and they all have stories about southern investors beating them.”
Several suburbs of Rockhampton and Gladstone also recorded price rises of more than 30% in the past year.
Mr Moore said net migration from other states to Queensland had driven the state’s population growth since the pandemic, with the added demand for housing fuelling house-price growth.
“The fact that we’re seeing really strong conditions in those markets suggests there is still a lot of demand for homes in those areas, and we’re seeing prices grow really quickly as a result,” he said.
Prices grew 13% in Guildford among a surge in demand for affordable homes across western Sydney. This brand new three-bedroom house sold for $1.035 million late last year. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
Suburbs in Perth’s north-east, such as Midvale, Girrawheen and Balga, have recorded price growth by up to 35%, yet typical homes in these areas sell for less than the city’s overall median price.
The Adelaide suburbs where prices rose more than 20% were concentrated in the city’s more affordable northern suburbs, including Davoren Park, Elizabeth North and Smithfield Plains.
Sydney’s top growth suburbs for houses were mostly found in the city’s west, with Fairfield East, Sefton and Guildford posting some of the fastest price growth.
Tweed Heads, with a median house price of $1.2 million, had the fastest house-price growth in NSW, with values rising 19% in 2024.
This elevated Tweed Heads cottage sold for $909,000 last year. Prices in Tweed Heads rose 19% in 2024 – the fastest rate of all NSW suburbs. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
Six of the top seven suburbs for house-price growth in NSW were located in that region, including Bilambil Heights, Banora Point and Terranora. Several Tweed suburbs also had some of the state’s strongest unit-price growth.
Mr Moore said this was consistent with strong demand for housing in the broader Gold Coast region, with buyers increasingly searching across the border for more affordable homes.
In Melbourne, outer-northern suburbs such as Coolaroo and Dallas recorded some of the city’s highest growth rates. With median house prices of less than $550,000, these are also some of the cheapest suburbs in the city to buy a house.
Some of Melbourne’s most affordable suburbs, such as Dallas where this three-bedroom brick house sold for $518,000, where among the city’s top performers in 2024. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
Prices also grew in the outer east, including Cranbourne South, Junction Village and Lyndhurst, where a reasonably new house can cost less than $800,000.
While Melbourne’s top performing suburbs recorded growth rates of between 3% and 5%, this came against a backdrop of stagnating values in the Victorian capital.
Melbourne is now more affordable than Adelaide, and only Perth, Hobart and Darwin have lower median dwelling prices.
The top growth suburbs in Victoria were all regional towns, such as Rutherglen where this period house on a 3547sqm block recently sold for $785,000. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
Higher levels of new-home construction in Melbourne and slower population growth since the pandemic relative to the other capitals have affected the balance of supply and demand. On top of this, decade-high listing volumes have given buyers more choice and kept price-growth in check.
Several regional Victorian towns in the state’s north including Merbein, Kerang, Kyabram and Rutherglen, had higher growth rates than any Melbourne suburbs, while Shepparton, Yarrawonga and Echuca had the state’s fastest price growth for units.
At the national level, unit prices jumped the quickest in suburbs in the Logan region of Brisbane, including Woodridge, Logan Central and Slacks Creek.
Logan is one of Brisbane’s most affordable regions, with typical unit values in most suburbs remaining under $500,000 – despite the hot market pushing up prices.
Brisbane’s most affordable suburbs for units recorded some of the biggest price jumps in 2024. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
In Perth, the southern suburb of Orelia was the city’s most affordable for units in 2023, but values jumped 43% last year to reach $346,000 – one of the fastest unit-growth rates recorded in the nation.
While affordability was the common thread among most of the suburbs with the fastest growth, there were a few exceptions.
The median house value in the Gold Coast suburb of Mermaid Beach jumped 17% to reach $3.07 million, while Bellevue Hill in Sydney’s east rose 13% during the year to $9.95 million and North Curl Curl recorded a 9% rise to $3.55 million.
Where homes are selling the fastest
Affordability was also a common theme among suburbs where homes sold quickest, with houses in parts of Townsville and outer Perth being snapped up little more than a week after hitting the market.
Houses typically sold in two to three weeks in many suburbs in the Penrith and Macarthur regions of Sydney, while in Melbourne the fastest selling suburbs were mostly in the outer east.
Days on market for units were low in several inner-city suburbs of Brisbane such as Auchenflower, Lutwyche, Taringa and Toowong, as well as inner-Perth suburbs including Inglewood, Glendalough and Mount Lawley.
In Adelaide, homes sold quickest in a handful of suburbs near the coast, including Glenelg for units and Morphettville for houses.
Mr Moore said low days on market indicated competitive buying conditions, which could contribute to strong price growth.
Units in the inner Brisbane suburb of Auchenflower are flying off the shelf, typically selling within 10 days, making it one of Australia’s fastest-selling suburbs. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
“If you’re looking in that area and you’ve got more people looking around there, it’s going to make the auction or sales process just a lot more competitive than in an area where there’s more availability and homes are sitting on the market longer, and there’s not as much competition from buyers,” he said.
The most in-demand suburbs
Measuring the number of enquiries per property listing on realestate.com.au can provide a gauge of demand in an area, with properties for sale in some popular suburbs receiving more than 100 enquiries during a sales campaign.
Across the states, the most in-demand suburbs were found in the capitals, and more affordable suburbs tended to rank highly.
Werrington in Sydney’s outer west recorded 155 enquiries per house listing — more than anywhere else in Australia — while nearby Hebersham and St Marys attracted plenty of buyer interest too.
These suburbs are among the most affordable in the Greater Sydney region, and based on this metric, were even more sought-after than many popular and pricey suburbs such as Vaucluse, Mosman and Randwick.
Local real estate agent and Ray White Diamantidis Group principal Peter Diamantidis said relatively low property prices in western Sydney and upgrades to infrastructure that improved connectivity were key factors drawing buyers to affordable suburbs in the area.
Werrington, near Penrith in Sydney’s outer west, was Australia’s most in-demand suburb in 2024. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
“St Marys is probably the hottest out all of them right now because of the new airport metro going in,” he said.
“About 50% of people buying in the area are first-home buyers.”
Suburbs in the Ipswich and Logan regions of Queensland also had high levels of enquiry for both houses and units, given the affordability of these areas relative to the rest of Brisbane, while outer-northern suburbs of both Melbourne and Adelaide were in high demand.
But several suburbs at the other end of the spectrum also experienced strong levels of enquiry, with the data revealing pockets of high demand in Sydney’s affluent eastern suburbs and lower north shore.
North Sydney was among several pricey suburbs in high demand with home buyers. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
North Sydney (median price $2.9 million), Rose Bay ($6.2 million) and Coogee ($3.8 million) had some of the highest levels of enquiry in the nation, despite being among Australia’s priciest suburbs.
Apartments in waterfront Sydney suburbs such as Dolls Point, Kirribilli, Clovelly and Double Bay were also in high demand. High interest rates have made units in these suburbs more expensive to own, but apartments in these areas are still a much more affordable alternative to houses.
Mr Moore said strong buyer interest in Sydney’s pricey enclaves was likely due to the fact that homes in these popular suburbs are often tightly held, meaning properties don’t frequently come up for sale.
Harbourfront Kirribilli, beside the Sydney Harbour Bridge, was one of the most sought-after suburbs for unit buyers. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
“These are quite highly sought after suburbs in general, so there is very strong demand for homes when they do become available,” he said.
Demand was also strong along Sydney’s north shore train line, where the state government’s new transport-oriented development program allows for houses near train stations to be redeveloped into apartments – potentially bringing owners of affected properties a major windfall.
In Perth, inner and southern suburbs, mostly with median house prices between $1.5 and $2 million, experienced the strongest buyer demand, including Wembley, Shenton Park and West Leederville.
Established inner Perth suburbs popular popular with upgraders, such as West Leederville, were among the most sought-after in Western Australia. Picture: realestate.com.au/sold
Real estate agent Craig Gaspar of Duet Property Group said part of the appeal was that these areas were still more affordable than pricier suburbs closer to the beach.
“Wembley and West Leederville are about seven to eight minutes to the CBD and the same distance to the coast, so they’re really good central locations that offer a great lifestyle to people.”
“A lot of people are upgrading to the area. The school zones I’m selling in are very popular.”
What to expect in the year ahead
Looking ahead, Mr Moore said highly anticipated interest-rate cuts could unlock further property-price growth – given increased borrowing capacities would give most buyers more money to spend – but it was likely that increases would be more modest.
“We’re not going to see high cuts to interest rates, and affordability is extremely challenging at the moment so that’s going to be a big headwind,” he said.
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“Price growth has slowed over the past six months or so, consistent with those affordability constraints biting.
“Our expectation is we will see some price growth this year, but probably slower than what we saw last year.”
