The five numbers to know about Melbourne: RP Data's weekend auction preview

Real estate is often about numbers. Everything it seems, from the price of the house to the weekly rent, can be expressed as a number.

Here are five topical numbers as the market enters spring:

• 25,080

This is the number of units in the suburb of Melbourne. Melbourne has the most individual dwellings of any suburb in the city which will come as little surprise to anyone who has watched the highrise market take off in the last decade.

This is also a very large number in the context of the general density of the city. By way of contrast, the suburb with the most houses is Reservoir with 13,692 and when you include all the units, the number rises to 20,430, still well short of Melbourne.

• 871

With 871 houses sold in the last 12 months Pakenham has recorded the most house sales of any suburb in Melbourne.  The popularity of housing in the suburb is based on many factors, key amongst them is its relative affordability.  Based on the sales in the last year the median price was $337,500 compared $532,000 for Melbourne.

• 49

There are now 49 suburbs in Melbourne that have a median house value of $1 million or more. At nearly one in 10 sales across the city occurring for a sale price in the million dollar range, it is far more common than it used to be.

What has not changed is the most expensive suburb, Toorak, which had a median value of $2.941 million and saw 151 sales for more than a million dollars over the past year.

• 30

The median value of a house in Melbourne has grown by 30.4% over the past five years. Only two capital cities have exceeded that over the same time, Sydney and Darwin.

• 1

One is the number of suburbs in the cities west that have a median house value of more than one million dollars. Overlooking the Maribyrnong River and neighbouring the popular Essendon, Aberfeldie has a median house value of $1.04 million after a 14% rise in last year.

If you wanted to live there and can afford the price then you will probably need to wait as it is only a small suburb, 1,099 houses, and averages only one sale every 6.5 days.

Weekend auction preview

There are 765 auctions scheduled this week in Melbourne compared to 530 for the same time last year. The highest number of auctions is expected in the Glen Waverly with 16 scheduled this week.

Buyers are likely to face more vibrant market conditions and higher prices compared to the spring selling season last year.

The August RP Data Core Logic home value indices results released this week shows a rise in dwelling values of 0.8% in Melbourne and 7.6% rise this year.

Due to high levels of supply in the unit market, the majority of the growth occurring in the market is for houses. For houses, the index recorded a rise of 8.3% this year compared to 2.5% for units.

Time on market results for houses sold at private sale rose from 44 days to 47 days over the last week whilst vendor discounting rose from -5.2% to -5.3%.

Key data

• Clearance rate week ending 31 August: 73.5%
• Melbourne auctions expected week ending 7 September: 765
• Melbourne private sales time on market week ending 31 August: 47 days (houses)
• Melbourne vendor discounting market week ending 31 August: -5.3% (houses)
• Listings being prepared for market are -1.3% lower in month ending 31 August (seasonally adjusted)