Revealed: 23 suburbs where you can buy a house for less than $500,000
Buying a property is out of reach for most young Aussies but there are 23 suburbs where you can get a home for less than $500,000.
Buying a home in a capital city is out of reach for most young Aussies, but there are still some big city suburbs scattered across the country where the Australian Dream can be snapped up for less than $500,000.
There are 23 suburbs with median house prices below $500,000, PropTrack data has revealed, with the cheapest suburbs going for less than $400,000.
Brisbane, Melbourne, Hobart, Darwin and Adelaide all boast suburbs under the $500,000 benchmark, with only Perth and Sydney sitting outside the threshold.
Greater Hobart had the most entries on the list, with suburbs making the half million cut off.
Located just over 20km from Hobart’s CBD, Gagebrook clocks in with the region’s lowest median house price at $381,474.
It’s a steady increase from the northwestern suburb’s $221,000 median in February 2020.
Melbourne’s only representative on the list was Melton ($471,879), located on the city’s outskirts around 37km from the CBD.
The suburb that topped the list is Russell Island, an island town around 60km southeast of Brisbane CBD with a median price of $380,942.
Other greater Brisbane suburbs that made the cut included: Macleay Island ($416,461), Toogoolawah ($478,892), and Forest Hill ($487,060).
The Northern Territory’s Moulden and Gray, both between 20-25km from the state capital, featured high on the list, averaging at a median price of $400,953 and $407,406 respectively.
Australia’s housing crisis has been attributed to a number of factors, including high costs of living, lack of supply, inflationary pressures and underinvestment.
Monday’s Productivity Commission report found Australia was completing half as many homes than in 1995 – when the country had a population of about 18 million – representing a 53 per drop in housing productivity.
“Australian housing is increasingly unaffordable [and] decades of inadequate supply coupled with high demand has driven this outcome,” the report said.
As the federal election looms, housing affordability has become a key election topic.
On Sunday, the federal government announced a ban on foreign purchases of existing Australian homes in a bid to appeal to voters concerned with housing affordability and cost-of-living.
“It’s not a silver bullet to the housing crisis, because there is no silver bullet,” housing minister Clare O’Neil told Sky News.
“But I really firmly believe that given the housing pressures that Australians are facing today, we need to orient the entire efforts of the Australian government around security of housing for Australians, and, wherever possible, home ownership for a broader range of young Australians,” she said.
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