Toowoomba suburb sees massive drop in property prices

A TOOWOOMBA suburb has witnessed one of the largest drops in housing prices in Australia since the COVID-19 pandemic began, according to data.

A TOOWOOMBA suburb has witnessed one of the largest drops in housing prices in Australia since the COVID-19 pandemic began, according to data compiled by comparison firm Finder.com.au.

Rangeville was revealed to have experienced a 23 per cent drop in median housing prices between January and April, going from $543,000 to $418,000 in that period.

Only Hawthorne in Brisbane (34 per cent) experienced a worse drop in median prices during the same time period.

When asked about possible reasons for the decline in Rangeville, Real Estate Institute of Queensland zone chair Katie Knight said several factors could be at play.

"It really depends on where you draw your figures from and in what format that would produce such a sharp decline in prices, such as combining housing and units together for example, where independently these markets have performed very differently thus far in 2020," she said.

"With no other data showing these same figures, for the first quarter of 2020, using CoreLogic data, Rangeville saw a -1.7 per cent reduction in value from $445,000 to $437,500 over 31 sales, so it's a very tightly held market.

"Further drops in the perceived median value to June 2020 may be a result of more recent sales occurring within lower price points of the market, while a lack of higher-priced inventory coming onto the market is skewing the results."

Ms Knight said units were not performing as well as houses, recording a -7.2 per cent drop over the first quarter of 2020,

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