Western Australia’s property market scorecard 2000-2014: Simon Pressley
Western Australia contains Australia’s two best performed property markets and four in the top ten. Since the year 2000, the property markets of the local government authority of East Pilbara (Newman) and Port Hedland have performed better than any other market in Australia, while Capel and Kwinana ranked ninth and tenth.
Propertyology conducted a study to compare the historical property market performance of each of Australia’s 550 local government authorities between 2000 and 2014. Given that some property markets have higher rates of growth and others have higher rental yields, Propertyology calculated the ‘total return’ (average annual growth rate plus rental yield) and we then ranked the LGA’s from 1 to 550 based on this performance.
132 of the total 550 Australian LGA’s are in Western Australia. Eleven capital city LGA’s and 19 regional LGA’s were ranked in Australia’s Top 100. The regional LGA’s include Derby (17th), Roebourne / Karratha (18th), Collie (23rd), Wyndham (30th), Carnarvon (43rd), Murray (64th), and York (92nd). Geraldton (135th), Broome (123rd), and Mandurah (117th) also ranked amongst Australia’s best 25%.
Whilst there will always be a segment of Australia’s population who frown upon investing in mining communities the indisputable facts are that a large proportion of Australia’s best performed property markets over the last 15 years have a mining flavour within their economy. WA’s iron ore and gas sectors were the prominent growth drivers, especially during the period 2004 to 2012.
In spite of 16.6% and 13.9% declines in median house values in Newman and Port Hedland, respectively, during 2014 they are still streets ahead of the rest of the country. Double digit price growth occurred in nine of the last fifteen years. Over the nine year period to December 2012, median house values increased by 9.1 and 5.5 times, respectively. And, even though there has been a spike in vacancy rates of late, rental yields remain well above average.
Kwinana is the highest ranked capital city LGA in Australia for total return over the period 2000 to 2014. The affluent Peppermint Grove ranked 184th.
Perth was the second best performing capital city over the 15-year period (behind Darwin). The median house value for Greater-Perth has increased from $248,583 as at the start of 2000 to $898,844 by December 2014. Over the 6 year period to December 2007, Greater-Perth’s median house value increased 2.89 times.
You can view an infographic for the entire Western Australian Scorecard here.
SIMON PRESSLEY is managing director of Propertyology, a full-time property market analyst, accredited property investment adviser, and Australia’s (REIA) Buyer’s Agent of the Year (2012+2013+2014).