2020’s property hotspots: Luxury leaps as property buyers buoyant - Core Logic

As Australia’s luxury properties start to pull ahead of the general market, these were Australia’s top suburbs in 2020.

The $95m sale of a waterfront mansion in Sydney’s Point Piper in September was the biggest sale of 2020.

Australia’s luxury property market is beginning to pull ahead of the general market as confidence returns and buyers dig deep.

Blue-chip suburbs in Sydney and Melbourne were revealed as the nation’s highest-priced real estate, according to property researcher CoreLogic’s annual Best of the Best report.

In Sydney’s leafy east, harbourfront Darling Point again had the highest median house value of $7.06m. Neighbouring Point Piper maintained its standing as most expensive for units, costing a median of $2.28m.

CoreLogic’s head of research, Eliza Owen, said 2020 proved the resilience of the Australian property market despite COVID-19 causing the nation’s largest economic downturn since the 1930s.

 

“This is not to say these suburbs have been unaffected by the pandemic; indeed, the high end of the Sydney market is generally more volatile to changes in economic conditions,” Ms Owen said.

“This volatility tends to see a rapid recovery in the wake of lower mortgage rates and (improved) consumer sentiment.”

The $95m sale of a waterfront mansion in Point Piper in September was the biggest sale of 2020.

The initial shock of COVID-19 led to price falls of 2.1 per cent nat­ionally between April and September, but the strong start and end to the year pushed housing values up 1.1 per cent over 2020.

Ms Owen said the luxury market’s rapid recovery was due to lower interest rates and an improvement in consumer sentiment. She predicted these factors, coupled with mortgage deferments and government stimulus, would prop the property market up through 2020.

Australia’s most expensive suburbs were Sydney-centric, with Darling Point followed by Bellevue Hill ($5.72m), Vaucluse ($5.39m) and Double Bay ($4.76m). The only suburb in the top 10 outside Sydney was Melbourne’s trendy Toorak, with a median housing value of $4m.

Smaller capital cities showed more affordability at the top end. Canberra houses peaked in Forrest at a median $3.12m, trailed by Perth’s Peppermint Grove ($2.42m), Teneriffe in Brisbane ($1.86m) and Adelaide’s Unley Park ($1.4m).

Hobart and Darwin were the cheapest, with Battery Point ($1.18m) and Lyons ($720,580) topping respective markets.