A record number of Australians spent $1 million or more to secure a home in the past year, a new report has revealed.
CoreLogic’s annual Million Dollar Markets report shows that over the year to March 2022, CoreLogic recorded 596,733 sales nationally, up 19.8% from the 497,923 sales in the previous year.
Of these, 23.8% sold for a million dollars or more.
In the year to May 2022, an additional 487 markets (450 house and 37 unit markets) joined the million-dollar club. In total 1,367 or 30.4% of house and unit markets analysed in May recorded a median value of $1 million or more.
Report author, CoreLogic Research Analyst Kaytlin Ezzy, said that Australia’s bullish economic and property performance during latter part of 2021 had led to a record result for both the volume of transactions and the proportion of million-dollar sales.
“High consumer sentiment, tight advertised supply and low interest rates fuelled strong home value growth throughout 2021, resulting in a new record high annual growth rate of 22.4% over the 12 months to January”, Ezzy said.
The report shows Sydney suburbs made up 26.3% of the new million-dollar markets, which Ezzy suggests is unsurprising given the city’s median dwelling value has sat above $1 million since May 2021.
“While the largest concentration of new million-dollar markets in the city’s South West, Outer South West and Central Coast, Sydney’s million-dollar markets are fairly wide spread, with more than half of all Sydney sale over the 12 months to May transaction at or above $1 million,” she said.
“Despite values having risen across all capital cities and rest of state areas annually, we have seen a divergence in growth conditions across markets over the year to date”, Ezzy added.
“Since January, dwelling values across Sydney and Melbourne have started to decline, while values have continued to rise across South Australia and Queensland. More recently, Canberra, which had previously recorded many months of consecutive growth, recorded its first falls in dwelling values in some years in May.
“As the market moves into the downward phase of the cycle it’s likely a number of the recent entrants to the million-dollar list will see their median values decline below the $1 million mark.
“Despite this, Australian household wealth hit record high levels at the end of the March quarter, driven by continued strength in the housing market largely driven by gains across the real estate sector”, she concluded.
