$1 million house median not in sight for Sydney: CoreLogic RP Data

CoreLogic RP Data’s head of research Tim Lawless puts Sydney’s current house median at around $900,000 - and approaching its peak for this property cycle.

He doesn't see it getting to $1 million, instead likely to plateau between now and 2016.

“I think growth will moderate based on conditions such as investors now finding it harder to get loans and the general feeling the market has hit its peak,” he told News Ltd this week.

“The big risk is that people continue to buy into this market expecting price growth to continue at the current rate. I just don’t think that will happen.”

He has calculated 3.4% for the June quarter and 17.9% for the year, noting the CoreLogic RP Data method of calculating the value of all houses in the greater Sydney area was more comprehensive than simply focusing on a small sample of properties that had sold over a certain period.

“We have a mathematical algorithm that estimates values based on the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, parking spaces, land size, geographical location, whether the house has a pool and so on,” Mr Lawless said.

“We break all these factors down and give them each a value. This stops the median from moving around a lot based on what stock is being sold.”

CoreLogic RP Data figures show there are 433 Sydney suburbs where house medians are less than $1 million after sales over the past 12 months, compared to 272 with $1 million plus medians.