‘Highly desirable’: NSW tree-change towns where house prices boomed

The cost of a home has risen in almost every council area outside Sydney as house prices across regional NSW record the strongest gains in a year.

The median house price across regional NSW overall was 3.3 per cent higher in the March quarter than a year ago, the latest Domain House Price Report, released on Thursday revealed. For the three months to March, house prices rose 1.9 per cent, which represented the highest quarterly growth in a year.

Dr Nicola Powell, Domain chief of research and economics, said a slowdown in prices in council areas outside Greater Sydney during part of 2024 had started to ease.

“What we’ve got now is two back-to-back, quite robust quarters of growth, and over the March quarter, we’re starting to see price gains gain momentum,” she said.

“Overall, regional NSW is at a new record high, at $785,000 for its house price,” she said.

The regional movements are in line with trends in Sydney where house prices rose 1.7 per cent in the March quarter to hit a record $1.692 million, on Domain data. Experts said price gains in Australia’s most populous city came as buyers got a confidence boost from the potential for more interest rate cuts.

For regional NSW growth, the council area of Lismore topped the list. Its median house price rose 28.6 per cent in the year to March as the area continued its recovery from the 2022 flooding.

Lismore has been undergoing rebuilding, relocations and a government buyback scheme over recent years.

“Lismore in itself, obviously, we know, had devastating impacts from floods and certain locations in Lismore have obviously seen a regeneration of housing in certain locations,” Powell said.

The flooding prompted a loss of confidence about living in the area, KPMG urban economist Terry Rawnsley said, but the recovery in house prices was normalising.

Lismore locals are buying in the area as it recovers from floods in 2022.Credit: Photo: Brook Mitchell

“I think we’re kind of, two or three years down the track, you know a lot of those repairs have been done. People are looking to move on from the area, people are looking to come into the area as well,” he said.

Neil Scott, principal of Ray White Lismore, viewed the region’s property market over the last year as stable and there had been some top-end sales.

“You’ve got the flood-affected homes that have been transacted,” he said. “Some have been bought back by the government. Some have been sold privately, stripped out in need of renovation, and some have been renovated that have sold as well.”

He said there had been sales at the upper part of the market as locals look to relocate in the area.

“We’ve seen good activity in the high end, particularly the last three months,” he said, adding his agency had sold multiple properties from $950,000 up to $1.35 million in the first portion of the year.

The Upper Hunter and Snowy Valleys had the next biggest growth after Lismore, rising annually 20.0 per cent and 19.9 per cent respectively.

Other Northern Rivers areas also jumped. Byron rose 16.8 per cent, while the Tweed jumped 16.3 per cent over the year to March.

Buyers are coming back to Byron looking for permanent or holiday homes.Credit: Photo: Danielle Smith

“Some of these locations, you know those coastal locations, like Byron, Tweed, highly desirable,” said Powell. “They did see a bit of a pullback in price, but I think it showcases the demand is still strong there.”

Christian Sergiacomi, principal at Pacifico Property said the Byron market had turned around after a slower period.

“Late last year, we started seeing people executing – people that had been hovering around deciding to exchange and buy things,” he said.

“And then the momentum very much has continued through January, February, March, into now, with sales.”

Buyers were coming to Byron looking for permanent or holiday homes, Sergiacomi said, rather than looking for investment properties.

Making investors less prominent in Byron is a major change in policy on short-term rentals, with a 60-day-a-year non-hosted cap introduced to ease the housing shortage in the region.

Prospective Byron buyers were often looking for finished homes over ones that needed renovation, and they were drawn to the natural attributes of the region, Sergiacomi said.

He described the town as “a huge bay facing north with all day sun.”

Rawnsley said people’s views about living regionally were different to what they were in 2019.

“They can see that there can be a bit of remote-working,” he said. “They can still duck back into their offices if required at certain times. So I think living regionally, there’s a lot more confidence and understanding about how that will work.

“There’s a lot more acceptance and understanding about making a shift into a region.”