One million millionaires: the regions where property boom generated unprecedented wealth for Sydney homeowners

More than half of Sydney homeowners are now millionaires due to spectacular property price rises. See how many millionaires live in your suburb and if you’re part of the seven figure club

Soaring property prices have turned more than a million owners of homes in NSW into millionaires.

Property valuation data provided exclusively to the Saturday Telegraph showed 978,000 homes, including houses, townhouses, units and villas, in the Greater Sydney area are now worth over $1 million.

This represented 50.5 per cent of all housing stock in the Greater Sydney area, which included the Central Coast, Blue Mountains and other pockets within an 80km radius of the CBD.

There were a total 1,184,000 properties in the million dollar club in NSW as a whole, according to the CoreLogic valuations data.

Homeowners in no other Australian city and state had even close to this level of wealth tied up in real estate.

About a third of Melbourne homeowners were part of the million dollar club, while in Brisbane it was an eight and in Adelaide one in a dozen.

Khalil and Jessica Saba, with kids Gabriel and Olivia, recently sold a home in Greystanes for a big price. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Sydney’s surge in million dollar valuations came as house prices ballooned by an average of about six per cent, or nearly $90,000, during the three months of Covid restrictions.

Total growth over the past year was 29 per cent – the fastest rise in prices since 1989.

CoreLogic head of research Eliza Owen said the rampant pace of price rises created unprecedented riches for homeowners.

“It is disseminating wealth,” she said, adding that there were major perks for the economy. “Consumption goes up when people feel they are in better financial position. It’s the wealth effect.”

The data does not reveal whether the homes are investment properties or owner-occupier dwellings, or owners of more than one home.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics says about 65 per cent of NSW homes were owner occupied and 32 per cent were rented. Investors also tended to own cheaper housing stock than owner occupiers.

Ms Owen added that Sydney homes worth over $1 million weren’t simply detached houses in affluent regions such as the north shore: new millionaire’s rows were emerging in the west and south, often the homes of long time owners.

Valuations showed 85 per cent of homeowners in the Hills district were property millionaires, while in the Sutherland Shire it was 71 per cent.

Close to 43 per cent of homeowners in the Parramatta LGA, a region dominated by high-rise apartments, owned an asset with a seven figure value.

A similar proportion of homeowners in the Camden region, more than 65km southwest of the CBD, were property millionaires.

Veteran agent Peter Salisbury, director of Stone Real Estate-Camden, said million dollar home values would have been unthinkable in the normally cheaper southwest region even last year.

“It’s not what we’re used to,” he said. “Being a millionaire was a dream when I was a kid. Now everyone is one in some of our streets.”

Ray White-St Marys principal Peter Diamanditis said even parts of the Blacktown region, historically the cheapest markets in Sydney, were brimming with million dollar properties.

“Last year we sold about nine St Marys properties for over a million, this year there’s been over 30,” he said.

“It’s changing people’s lives. We’re getting people who lived in their homes since the 1960s who can’t believe they’re now in the $1 million club. Often it’s just old fibro houses or brick homes.”

Greystanes residents Jessica and Khalil Saba said their 1960-era house’s steep climb in value encouraged them to knock it down, subdivide their block, build two duplexes, sell one and live in the other.

They bought the original house for $440,000 in 2010 and sold the one duplex for $1.6 million at auction last week. “We thought there was no way we’d get that,” Ms Saba said.

“After that sale, I said to my husband: ‘if we’d known it would go up like this, we would have bought three houses’.”

The couple said were initially nervous about selling during the lockdown. That feeling evaporated when 17 bidders registered with their selling agent Daniel Starr of Starr Partners.

Mr Starr said similar houses were selling for under a million before Covid.

This fibro house on Lethbridge St in St Marys recently sold for $1,160,000.

“What’s $1.5 or $1.6 million today, was $900,000,” he said. “Residents, particularly those who haven’t kept up with the market, can’t believe it.”

Alex Pitsis, director of APG Ray White-Sutherland Shire, buyers with a $1 million budget would probably only get a unit or small townhouse in the Shire. “Entry level houses are $1.5 million,” he said.

8 Cosgrove Crescent, Kingswood recently sold for $1,100,000.

Ms Owen said the downside to the recent bump in real estate wealth was that it left first homebuyers on the sidelines.

“It does create inequality between those who own property and those who don’t,” she said. “First homebuyers numbers are falling.”

Numbers on the share of $1 million homes owned by owner occupiers and investors were not available, but ABS stat showed about 65 per cent of NSW homes were owner occupied and 32 per cent were rented. Investors tended to own cheaper housing stock than owner occupiers.