Sydney and Melbourne regions have experienced the strongest value growth over the past decade while the other capital cities have generally seen comparatively moderate value increases.

The CoreLogic Home Value Index data is available at geographic aggregations smaller than just the capital city and states.  In this week’s Pulse we take a look at the SA3 regions across the country that have seen the greatest increase in values over the past decade.  For the analysis we have only included SA3 regions that had an estimated residential population of more than 20,000 as at June 2016.

The region nationally that has recorded the greatest increase in dwelling values over the past decade is Wyndham in Melbourne where values are 129.9% higher.   Wyndham is an outer south-western region of Melbourne which has seen substantial new housing development occur over the past decade.  The region with the second highest rate of value growth has been Pennant Hills – Epping located in the Hills District of Sydney.

When analysing the regions with the greatest value increases, the top 10 regions nationally are all located in either Sydney or Melbourne while Katherine in the Northern Territory is the only region outside of NSW or Vic to have recorded value growth in excess of 50% (52.4%) over the past decade.  This highlights how much stronger value growth has been in Sydney and Melbourne relative to other capital cities over the past decade.

SA3 regions in each state with the greatest increase in
dwelling values, decade to October 2017

The top 5 list for each state and territory shows a significant slant towards capital city regions rather than regional housing markets.  In fact, only Katherine and Alice Springs make the list for the top 5 in each state and territory outside of a capital city.

The top 5 list also highlights just how weak the housing market in Perth has been over the past decade, despite the mining boom supporting strong capital gains over the first half of the decade. Serpentine – Jarrahdale has been the strongest region for growth in WA (17.5%) with every other region of the state recording growth over the decade of less than 5%.

Looking specifically at regions outside of the capital cities, again, most of the best performing regions are in NSW and Vic.  In fact, the top 15 regions listed in the second table have all recorded value increases over the past decade in excess of all of the capital city regions outside of Sydney and Melbourne.   13 of the top 15 regional markets for value growth over the past decade are located in either NSW or Vic.

Non-capital city SA3 regions with the greatest increase
in dwelling values, decade to October 2017

The top two regional markets for value growth over the past decade, Dapto – Port Kembla (89.7%) and Wollongong (77.8%) are both located in the Wollongong region directly south of Sydney. 
 
Overall the data highlights the strength of value growth in Sydney and Melbourne over recent years.  Furthermore, it details just how moderate growth has generally been outside of these two cities.  Keep in mind that between them, Sydney and Melbourne account for an estimated 40.3% of the national population and 58.3% of the total value of dwellings nationally.  Given this, it really highlights the extent to which the performance of the Sydney and Melbourne housing markets will drive the national headline growth figures.

Cameron Kusher
Senior Researcher at CoreLogic

_{Published: 4 December 2017.}