Every SA suburb: How Covid has affected your house price

While initial fears were the Covid-19 pandemic would tank the housing market, it turns out to have fuelled massive price growth across the state. How much have home values increased in your suburb since the start of the Covid pandemic?

While initial fears were Covid and its lockdowns would tank the housing market, in reality the opposite happened, with new data revealing just how well SA’s suburbs have fared since the start of the pandemic.

New PropTrack figures comparing April’s data with that from April 2020 show the median house price across metropolitan Adelaide is up 39 per cent on its pre-pandemic level.

Units have also fared well – they’ve increased by 24.1 per cent.

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Adelaide’s median house price now sits at $665,000, compared to its pre-pandemic $478,500, while the metropolitan unit median is now $428,000, up from $345,000 in April 2020.

Fuelled by an almost rabid hunger for luxury and room to move on the back of lockdowns, of suburbs to have recorded more than 10 sales in the past 12 months and in the same month of 2020, Medindie recorded the state’s highest growth.

Median prices in the city fringe suburb sit at $2.9375m – almost making it the state’s first suburb to record a $3m median – with values sitting 115.6 per cent higher than before the pandemic.

Selling agent Stephanie Williams on Robe Tce in Medindie, arguably Adelaide’s most prized street. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

In fact, there were six suburbs or towns where property prices have more than doubled in that time, with houses in Maylands, Teringie, Glenelg South and Peterborough, and units in Aldinga Beach all recording median price growths of more than 100 per cent.

LJ Hooker SA/WA State Manager Bill Dimou. Picture: Tom Huntley

LJ Hooker SA/WA state manager Bill Dimou said he was glad initial forecasts of a market downturn were incorrect.

“There were predictions by the banks at the time that prices were going to drop by 20 to 30 per cent during Covid and very quickly we found out that wasn’t the case and it was quite the opposite – property prices went up and real estate was an industry that continued to perform very well,” he said.

House prices right across Adelaide have soared on the back of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Certainly our handling of the pandemic and avoidance of lockdowns sparked that initial surge of interest from interstate, but it’s interesting to see that, three years on, SA had the highest inquiry from interstate buyers than any other state, with 28 per cent of all searches on realestate.com in February coming from interstate.”

Harcourts Packham’s James Packham.

Harcourts Packham managing director James Packham said recent attempts by the Reserve Bank of Australia to curb inflation – which in turn slows house price growth – had done little to dissuade hopeful buyers and the market was still strong.

“Despite the current uncertainty surrounding rate hikes and the increasing cost of living, Adelaide’s real estate market remains buoyant,” he said.

“In the past three months, rental property searches have gone up by 34 per cent compared to the same period in 2019, and searches to buy properties are up 29 per cent.”

He said while rents are skyrocketing and vacancy rates are at a record low, now was an excellent time to be a property investor in Adelaide.

“Tenant demand is high, rental prices are on the rise, properties are at low risk of sitting empty, rental yields are solid, and thanks to recent falls in some pockets, it’s a buyer’s market in several areas,” he said.