44 suburbs where house prices are cheaper today than in 2021 | PropTrack

House prices are lower than they were three years ago in a surprising list of dozens of suburbs across the state. Find out where you can buy today for less than 2021.

A Newington (Ballarat) home sold for $515,000 in 2022, but that only made $470,000 when it changed hands earlier this year.

Typical property prices in some of Melbourne’s most illustrious suburbs are hundreds of thousands of dollars cheaper than they were three years ago.

Latest PropTrack sales data shows 12 suburbs are now home to median house prices at least $100,000 less than they were in 2021, with Toorak at the top of the list having lost more than $775,000 as its $5.775m median house price fell to just $5m in the timeline.

In total, analysis of home sales data shows there are 44 Victorian suburbs where house prices remain below the pandemic era, the vast majority in Melbourne.

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There are also 102 suburbs where the typical unit’s value is below 2021 levels, headed by Kingsville and Kew where the median for apartments, flats and townhouses has slumped more than $200,000.

PropTrack economist Paul Ryan said it was possible for a change in the types of homes being sold to reduce a median without necessarily meaning all homes were now cheaper, but there were cases of motivated sellers taking a loss.

“In 2021, things were very frothy,” Mr Ryan said.
“And now conditions are clearly not as good as they were earlier in the pandemic.

“So there absolutely is a possibility that while not a majority of sales, that there are more sellers selling for less than they bought for.”

Interest rates have risen rapidly since early 2022 and Melbourne has maintained higher numbers of homes for sale than other capitals, limiting price growth.

“And it has been the case that the more affordable parts of the city, and even within suburbs, have been performing the best,” Mr Ryan said.

“And by the same token, it could be that when someone has listed something at the more reasonable end of the market, that gets snapped up more quickly and that could lead to more turn over at the bottom end of the market.”

This Aberfeldie home sold for less this year than it did in 2021.

RT Edgar Toorak managing director Jeremy Fox said land tax had driven a large number of the elite suburb’s investment properties onto the market, resulting in less competition among buyers and impacting the median price as lower quality homes assumed a greater proportion of the total number of sales.

Mr Ryan noted that for regional centres like Ballarat and Geelong, suburbs with fallen median house prices reflected a “recalibration” after values surged dramatically during the pandemic.

Ray White Ballarat sales agent Mark Williams said the city’s property market peaked in 2021 and that most homes across it were now worth as much as 15 per cent less than they had been three years ago.

A Toorak home on one of the suburb’s best known boulevards that sold for $7.85m in 2021 only made $7.1m when it changed hands earlier this year.

Mr Williams said this meant there had been a number of owners forced to sell for a loss, but that in many cases while they were not happy about the situation the chance to move on with their lives had value.

“It’s certainly a buyer’s market, and they can be quite aggressive in the market with so much property for sale,” he said.

A similar effect is also playing out along the Mornington Peninsula where high levels of holiday home ownership mean changes to land taxes and interest rate rises have combined to motivate large numbers of sellers to offload homes.

Mr Ryan added that for units, the $620,000 Melbourne-wide median was down about $10,000 (1.7 per cent) from 2021.

Even some typically much-loved warehouse style homes have lost ground in sales, with this Collingwood address losing $275,000 in the past five years.

In some instances these figures would have been influenced by an increase in one-bedroom apartments being sold in the past year, while there had been more townhouse or flat sales in 2021.

Suburbs that attract denser development are the most likely to have been impacted by this, such as Brunswick, Northcote and Carlton.

Jas Stephens director Tate Moore said a surge in ex-investment one-bedroom apartments was certainly the reason behind a seeming $230,000 reduction in Kensington’s median price.

However, Mr Moore noted it wouldn’t surprise him if some homes in Melbourne’s inner west did sell for less today than they would have in 2021.

“The spike we had post-covid was as good as I have seen; at the time we would put out a board and we’d have hordes showing up,” he said.

A glass-fronted South Melbourne home that was sold for less this year than it made in 2015.

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