Melbourne's million dollar suburbs as fringe hotspots come to the fore: Robert Larocca

Some new suburbs are regularly appearing on the REIV list of those with million dollar medians.

The REIV maintains a listing of the most expensive suburbs in Melbourne on its website. This list is updated every month and reflects sales over the preceding 12 months.

The latest list of 39 suburbs with median house prices over $1 million in the year ending February 28 contains many of the suburbs that would typically be expected to appear; those in the inner east, inner south east and north east.

In addition to those are some new suburbs that share few characteristics with the likes of East Melbourne and Brighton. These are Kangaroo Ground, Warrandyte South and Red Hill South. Whilst they differ from the other 36 suburbs with million dollar medians they do have a number of factors in common.

Each is on the edge of the metropolitan area meaning that proximity to the CBD is not a factor underpinning their high prices. As suburbs on the edge of the city they share quiet bush settings and low density.

Buyers are making a lifestyle choice to live here as for the same purchase price they could live much closer to the CBD.

In addition to location their homes have other features not found in most of the most expensive inner city locations.

The dwellings are large, with four- to five-bedroom houses being the average, clearly to take advantage of the other common factor: larger bush blocks. These two factors will contribute to the higher values as large blocks. In Kangaroo Ground, for instance, the average size is 14 acres.

This four-bedroom Italianate estate (pictured below) in Bellbird Lane, Kangaroo Ground, has been listed by Fletchers Eltham with price hopes of $1.75 million.

The residents in these burgeoning suburbs are on average less diverse than the metropolitan area and older with a median age of at least 40. The higher average age underpins very high levels of home ownership at between 41%  to 52% compared to the city wide average of 33%.

Due to their relatively small size these suburbs have a low volume of sales which is why they do not appear in the quarterly median price series.

This trend will likely continue. As the city becomes more dense suburbs in green wedges such as these will become comparatively more scarce, desirable and expensive.