Illawarra region in New South Wales best performing regional market: CoreLogic RP Data
Regional areas across Australia are under the spotlight due to a lift in transaction levels and median values given the rising expense of capital city property markets, according to CoreLogic RP Data's Regional Report for the March 2016 quarter.
According to CoreLogic RP Data, the Illawarra region in New South Wales leads the way as the best year-on-year performer with house values increasing by 15.8 percent and unit values increasing by 13.2 percent.
ILLAWARRA STATISTICS
CoreLogic research analyst Cameron Kusher said the Illawarra region has been a stand out performer in the past year, with the market driven largely by a surge in Sydney property prices as people find themselves priced out of the capital city housing market.
"The Illawarra region offers not just an affordable alternative for owner occupiers; it’s also attracting buyers keen to secure holiday homes," he said.
“With mortgage rates at their lowest levels in 53 years and tipped to drop even further, we’re likely to see housing purchases popular across larger coastal regional markets throughout 2016.”
"In another win for NSW, Richmond-Tweed was the only region to see sales volumes increase over the year, up 10.8 percent to 5,930, while Newcastle & Lake Macquarie and Illawarra both saw transactions lower relative to last year, down -1.4 percent and -3.2 percent respectively.
"Across Queensland, the Gold Coast recorded the largest increase in dwelling sales over the year to February 2016, up 7.3 per ent to 19,516 sales, followed by Wide Bay, which saw dwelling sales increase by 4.4 per cent to 5,471. Regional Townsville experienced the biggest fall in sales volumes over the same period, down -8.3 percent to 3,419 sales while in The Sunshine Coast and Cairns regions, volumes dropped by -2.4 percent and -2.3 percent respectively."
In regional Victoria, dwelling sales increased in Geelong, (up 2.0 percent to 6,117), and sales volumes across the Latrobe-Gippsland region increased by 7.4 percent.
Houses and units across Geelong rose by 5.4 percent and 2.8 per cent, according to the report, with house values in the Latrobe-Gippsland region up 3.0 percent and unit values up by 2.1 percent over the year to March 2016.
According to the report detached house stayed relatively unchanged in Bunbury in Western Australia and recorded a rise of just 0.3 per cent.
Cameron Kusher said unit values fell by -3.7 percent over the year to March 2016 while sales volumes were down -9.2 percent for houses and -24.1 percent across the smaller unit market, indicating current transaction levels are -4.2 percent below the five year average for the region.