Flemington offers Melbourne's most affordable terraces: Secret Agent
Flemington is the most affordable suburb in Melbourne, according to Secret Agent’s latest report.
Tables 3 to 6 list the most and least affordable suburbs for both terraces and townhouses, in terms of average prices as well as average price per square metre of internal space.
If a suburb had less than 5 sales it was excluded from the data pool.
Even the most affordable suburbs for terraces in inner Melbourne start at an average of over $1 million ($300,000 more than townhouses) as shown in Table 3.
Buyers would be hard pressed to find terraces anywhere near the CBD for less than $10,000/m2 of internal space.
Brunswick and Brunswick East's affordable terraces have an average price per square metre of $10,400/m2 and $11,400/m2 respectively.
Both of these suburbs also make the list of top 5 most affordable townhouses.
Collingwood terraces, which had the lowest average prices in our sampled region over the last year, sold for $11,800/m2 on average.
Terraces in Flemington were more affordable than terraces in any other inner suburb in our study.
The most expensive terraces in inner Melbourne sold for nearly twice as much on average as the most expensive townhouses, and are valued about $5,000/m2 more.
Table 4 shows the least affordable terraces and is dominated by Middle Park and Albert Park, which are highest per square metre and only beaten by Parkville in terms of average sale price.
Parkville terrace prices fell just short of making the list at $14,500/m2, edged out by its neighbour Carlton North ($14,800/m2).
"Despite being close on a price per square metre basis, if we only looked at average prices we would get a completely different impression, with average prices in Carlton North at $1.58 million, well below Parkville’s 2016 sample average of $2.44 million," the report stated.
Kensington in the inner West, as well as Brunswick, Brunswick East and Northcote in the inner North are in the top 5 most affordable suburbs for townhouses, both in terms of average prices and average price per square metre, shown in Table 5.
This comes at no real surprise to people who have been following inner Melbourne’s property market trends.
The same can be said about the lack of any affordable suburbs from the inner South on the list.
Abbotsford is the only suburb from the inner East that made the top 5 in 2016, coming in 4th when ranked by average price.
While not in the top 5 most affordable by price per square metre, the suburb is still relatively affordable at just over $8,000/m2.
The most deceptive suburb is West Melbourne, where townhouses in our sample were sold for nearly $1.1 million on average over the past year, which is well above the other suburbs in the top 5 list.
However, at only $7,100/m2, West Melbourne was the number one most affordable inner suburb per square metre of internal space.
Table 6 shows the least affordable suburbs for townhouses in 2016.
Only suburbs from the inner South and East appear in the top 5 when looking at average prices.
South Yarra is the most expensive suburb by both metrics, with Prahran, Port Melbourne and Richmond also making both lists.
Collingwood nearly made the most affordable list with an average townhouse sale price of only $870,000 in 2016.
However, when accounting for size, buyers of Collingwood townhouses spent nearly $9,300/m2 on average, the 5th highest of all suburbs we sampled.
While Hawthorn only made the top 5 when comparing average prices, at an average of $9,088/m2 it is also still relatively expensive on a price per square metre basis.
Property Observer found this three bedroom townhouse, 4/3 Tunbridge Street Flemington (pictured above), on the market for between $660,000-$720,000.
A two bedroom townhouse, 1 Gatehouse Place Maribyrnong (below), is going o auction March 4.
The three bedroom townhouse at 36 Archer Avenue Ascot Vale is on the market for between $830,000 and $870,000.
For more information from Secret Agent, click here.