Regional housing still booming as prices strike 30% annual gains

The regional housing boom has continued to gain pace, with some regional suburbs striking annual gains as impressive as 30% over the year to October 2021.

CoreLogic’s latest Regional Market Update showed that of the 25 regions analysed, 24 recorded double-digit annual gains for house values while more than half reported above 20% growth.

Seven suburbs, in particular, recorded a lift of more than 30%.

Factors driving the boom

CoreLogic research director Tim Lawless said the growth in each regional market are driven by localised factors but there are common key drivers including: a shift away from capital cities, low interest rates, credit accessibility, higher household savings, relative affordability.

“There has been a broad demographic shift where more Australians are prepared to consider housing options outside of the capital cities, which has seen net internal migration rates to regional Australia reach record highs,” he said.

“Working from home looks to have some degree of permanency post-COVID and is one of the catalysts of this trend, with more people basing themselves in regional locations to work remotely or balancing office work with home working.”

Mr Lawless said the longevity of this housing boom will ultimately depend on affordability.

“If housing values across regional parts of the country continue to outpace the capitals, the obvious outcome will be that regional markets lose their affordability advantage,” he said.

Some of the most popular regional coastal markets such as Byron Bay and Noosa on the Sunshine Coast have already recorded median house values surpassing $1m, overtaking their respective capital cities.

Best performing markets

CoreLogic’s report determined the best performing regional markets according to several factors.

Southern Highlands and Shoalhaven had the biggest annual jump in prices at 35.9% while New England and North West reported the highest sales growth of 77.1%.

Three markets — the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, and Ballarat — had the shortest days on market for houses at 18 days.

Meanwhile, Hume had the lowest vendor discounts at -1.9%.

In terms of units, Wide Bay hit the highest annual price gain at 29.2%.

Central Queensland had the highest annual sales growth of 111.9% while Launceston and North East reported the fastest selling time at 13 days.

Mid North Coast in Tasmania recorded the lowest vendor discount for units at -1.3%.

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Photo by Thomas de Luze on Unsplash.