Regional NSW suburbs where home prices will double in five years

NSW’s regional areas slated for astronomical growth by 2028 have been revealed, including suburbs where property prices could double. Search your suburb

Home buyers in regional NSW will need to splash an average of $1m for properties in five years’ time if prices continue on the same trajectory as recent years.

Buyers in popular tree-change and sea-change destinations will likely need to pay even higher, with PropTrack data showing dwelling prices in Byron Bay and nearby Casuarina and Suffolk Park would be over $2.7m.

Newcastle, Wollongong and the south coast would also be home to an array of suburbs where the average dwelling price was over $2m, double what it is now, including Thirroul, Hamilton South, Caves Beach, Gerringong and Kiama.

Wollongong will have $2m suburbs by 2028 if the current trajectory of prices continues. Picture: Illawarra Tourism.

That’s if prices grew at the same rate as the past five years, a period that included two market downturns and an 18-month boom.

PropTrack economist Angus Moore said regional real estate values would be bolstered by rising rents and a strong outflow of capital city residents into further flung regional centres.

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That exodus elevated during the early onset of Covid and, while the outflow from bigger cities has not been as strong since then, the trend has largely continued, Mr Moore said.

Terry Ryder, the director of property research group Hotspotting, said a number of factors were driving “positive market metrics” in smaller regional locations.

“Improving data on prices in the biggest cities recently has added to the ongoing strong performance in smaller cities and regional areas,” Mr Ryder said, noting rising rents were a decisive factor driving more people into property purchases.

“It adds up to a scenario where prices will likely rise in most of the nation’s key markets in 2023,” Mr Ryder said.

“Even the big bank economists have turned more positive in their outlooks, although they continue to underestimate the underlying strength in real estate markets in our assessment.”

PropTrack’s price modelling, which analysed price movements over the past five years and projected the same rises into the future, showed there would be just 50 regional NSW locations where it was still possible to purchase for under $700,000 by 2028.

They included flood-affected regions such as Lismore and towns in the far west and central west of the state such as Broken Hill and Cobar.

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The priciest NSW suburb outside of Sydney would be the Southern Highands enclave of Burradoo – a popular location for celebrities and other cashed up Sydneysiders to purchase luxury weekenders.

The current median dwelling price in the suburb is $2.8m and it would hit $5.19m by 2028 if previous price trends were repeated, according to the PropTrack projections.