Housing markets where all resales posted strong gains

Of the 30 housing markets with the highest incidence of profit-making sales, 20 are located within regional Australia, including non-coastal regional centres and lifestyle markets, CoreLogic revealed.

“The results partly reinforce some of the trend for established, regional markets that offer space and affordable houses, as opposed to the waning unit demand in major cities, through the pandemic,” CoreLogic’s head of research, Eliza Owen, said.

In the most profitable areas, 100 per cent of all resales made a nominal gain, including Bellingen in regional NSW, Burnie in regional Tasmania, and Mildura and Warrnambool in regional Victoria.

Ms Owen said that regional lifestyle markets such as Bellingen typically consist of over 75 per cent of owner-occupier properties, which have a higher incidence of profit-making sales and a higher median profit than investor profits.

Bellingen’s median profit currently sits at $302,500 – the second highest median profit recorded across all 30 housing markets on the list, right behind Noosa at $339,000.

In comparison, Burnie saw a median profit of $98,600, while Mildura and Warrnambool recorded $113,750 and $130,500, respectively.

Bellingen also recorded a median hold period of over 14 years, higher than the national average of 8.9 years.

Other housing markets that emerged with high incidence of profit-making sales were Ballarat (99.5 per cent), South Gippsland (99.5 per cent) and Campaspe (99.4 per cent) in regional Victoria, as well as Devonport (99.3 per cent) and West Tamar (99.1 per cent) in regional Tasmania.

In Queensland, Noosa had the highest rate of profit-making sales at 98.1 per cent, while in South Australia, Tea Tree Gully recoded 98 per cent, and in Western Australia, Augusta-Margaret River saw 90.4 per cent.

At a national level and based on 98,000 sales in total, sales with a nominal gain stood at 89.9 per cent through the December quarter, up from the recent low of 87.4 per cent in the three months to June.

In other words, nearly nine in every 10 sellers are profiting from property sales across Australia.

The report noted that the increase in the rate of profit-making sales reflected the turn in housing market performance as lockdowns started to ease and national housing values rose 2.3 per cent.

Looking ahead, Ms Owen said the surge in dwelling values witnessed across the property market in the first few months of 2021 would most likely drive a continued rise in the proportion of profit-making sales nationally.

However, several other factors may also come into play, particularly as Australia faces the impact of natural calamities and the ongoing economic recovery post-pandemic.

“Recent weeks of flooding, if not the past 12 months of extraordinary events, have shown that housing market activity, and ownership and transaction costs, can quickly change the outlook for profitability in real estate in certain markets,” Ms Owen concluded.

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