The top property performers of 2021

The findings come in the property data specialists annual 'Best of the Best Report', which analyses Australia’s best and worst performing suburbs for property (including top sales, highest median values and strongest growth rates).  

According to the report, Bellevue Hill in the NSW capital's eastern suburbs was the area with the highest median house value, at $8.7 million.

Meanwhile, neighbouring Point Piper recorded the highest median value for units, at just over $3.2 million.

Overall, detached house values increased 24.6 per cent across Australia in the past year, outperforming the 14.2 per cent uplift in national unit values.

There was also a 25.2 per cent increase in regional dwelling values - greater than that recorded in the combined capital cities (21.3 per cent), which was attributed to a variety of factors including extended lockdowns through 2021 and the remote work trend.

CoreLogic’s head of research, Eliza Owen, noted that the year 2021 had achieved remarkable new records for Australian property, with the estimated value of Australia’s residential real estate having gone from $7.2 trillion at the end of November 2020, to reach a record high of $9.4 trillion in just 12 months.

In addition, sales volumes climbed to an estimated 614,635 in the past 12 months, the highest level in almost 18 years, as dwelling values nationally increased 22.2 per cent in the 12 months to November, the highest increase since 1989. 

“Strong housing market performance over the year was driven by multiple factors, including low interest rates, fiscal and institutional support for households, high household savings and relatively low levels of advertised stock,” she said.

“Rates of housing turnover had also been relatively low for some years before these factors boosted housing demand, which may also explain the elevated volume of sales in the past 12 months, which at November was 32.6 per cent above the decade annual average.”

Suburbs of note

Ms Owen noted that the popularity of regional Australia amid the coronavirus pandemic was reflected in many aspects of the Best of the Best report for 2021.

She elaborated: “The quiet coastal suburb of Yamba, in the Coffs Harbour-Grafton region of NSW, achieved the highest annual growth in units of suburbs across Australia, at 56.6 per cent.

"Regional suburbs were represented in many of the top value growth tables, including Ocean Grove units in Geelong (up 41.7 per cent in the year), Fraser Island units in Wide Bay (up 48.2 per cent), and Campbell Town houses in Tasmania (up 50.5 per cent).” 

Higher-end lifestyle markets such as the Mornington Peninsula in Melbourne, the Northern Beaches in Sydney and the Gold and Sunshine coasts in South East Queensland, were also among the year’s top performers, as internal movements from cities to regions increased.

St Andrews Beach on the Mornington Peninsula recorded a value growth rate of 58.6 per cent, the highest for houses in the country. Meanwhile Mosman, one of Sydney’s most affluent suburbs, recorded 325 transactions worth almost $1.8 billion in house transactions for the year.

“This may in part be attributable to how COVID-19 continued to shape demand trends, with coastal or leafy settings being more desirable as some workers were empowered to work remotely,” Ms Owen said.

“However, this phenomenon may also just reflect market dynamics that have been observed in the housing market cycle over about a decade, where more expensive markets (particularly in Sydney and Melbourne) tend to show more volatility. This means during the upswing phase of the housing market cycle, expensive property markets in these cities will generally see higher growth rates.” 

Units also performed well this year, with several dominating the top 10 list of Australia’s most expensive property sales in 2021. These included three unit sales in excess of $40 million each in the newly completed Barangaroo tower on Sydney’s harbourfront.

The top 10 sales for the year totalled $407 million and ranged from $31,250,000 to $60 million.

[Related: Economy ‘coming back strongly’: NAB chief economist]