Looking back on this year I think we can all agree 2023 has been quite the ride.
It has been a year of upheaval politically and economically both globally and here at home.
This translated into volatility for property prices, with a further creation of markets within markets, all moving in their own ecosystems and changing from week to week.
Whilst I maintain an interest in the macro factors driving market movements I’m mostly concerned with trends in the suburbs where we search and buy for our clients.
With so much divergence in price movement between suburbs and property types, hyper local market knowledge is one of our cornerstones for clever buying.
Lets take a look at house and apartment price movements in the key suburbs where we’ve bought this year:
- Bondi house prices are up 3.7%, yet apartments are down 1.6%.
- Meanwhile houses in Bronte, just a kilometre further south have increased by 11.3%
- On the city fringe Redfern is up less than 1% for the year yet Darlington, just 300 metres down the road and one of my hot picks for investors and owner occupiers, is up 13.6%
- In my market wrap for 2022 I called out Hurlstone Park as a sleeping giant, and it turns out that house prices have increased by 22% since.
- Some interesting movements in Balmain with house prices down 5% while apartment prices are up 10%.
- In Centennial Park and Darling Point house prices are up 81% and 132% respectively, but do note thats from a data set of less than ten transactions in each suburb.
- Rose Bay had a shocking year -down 11% and 13% while across the water in Elizabeth Bay apartment prices are up 20%!
- That’s great news for the buyers we purchased for there, and certainly a better performance than here on our home soil- Paddington, which is up 5% for apartments and 2% for houses.
I’m not a data nerd, in fact the data is mostly interesting to me as it reflects what I have experienced in real time over the past twelve months, and as a reminder of how important hyper local knowledge and research is.
Past performance is also no indication of the future, in fact when it comes to investing, or buying for a client with a tight budget I’m more likely to look at a suburb that has underperformed this year. Perhaps there’s value to be had, vendors that are more motivated to sell, and a window of opportunity to buy well before prices re-calibrate.
In any case knowing what’s selling and why today, is critical to buying for the best price tomorrow.
That’s all for this week, we hope you found this info useful and as always if you have any questions please get in touch.
