Barry Plant Group’s figures show Melbourne’s middle-to-outer suburb property prices continue to climb.
While Melbourne’s median house price dropped by 3.5% in November over October, the average price across the Barry Plant Group rose by 2.4% to $638,000 for November.
The Barry Plant Group, Victoria’s top real estate network, represents more than 11% share of the Melbourne property market; since the Group’s average price is predominantly influenced by sales in the middle to outer suburbs, they provide an accurate snapshot of the performance of those areas.
The Group sold 1,953 properties during October and November – a strong indicator that the middle to outer suburbs are still enjoying price growth.
“These are great results,” CEO Mike McCarthy said. “Our figures support my view that the ripple effect from the inner suburbs’ price rises over this year are being felt in the middle to outer suburbs and probably still have some time to run.”
To exemplify the trend, Barry Plant’s Noble-Park and Keysborough offices – middle to outer suburbs – had their best month on record, selling an impressive 55 properties. While the western suburbs as a whole showed an overall price decrease of 1.6%, the outer west increased by 1.8%. Similarly, the inner east showed a decrease of 5.8% but the outer east and southeast showed a significant rise of 20.5%.
The north was the exception, with the outer showing a decrease of 5.1%, whilst the inner north had a slight rise of 0.6%. The AFL Grand Final and the Melbourne Cup weekend, traditionally slump periods for real estate sales, both fell in October this year, yet October saw only a small decrease in the Barry Plant Group’s number of sales (down 29 to 1003) compared to October 2014.
Despite the slight drop in sales, the overall value of sales was up 14.51% to $611 million and the average sale price across the group was up by a massive 18.49% to $624,000. “In comparing 2014 and 2015, we really look need to look at September and October combined due to the dates of the Grand Final and Cup Weekend,” Mike McCarthy said.
“Over the two months, 2015 saw an increase in the number of sales by 4.3%and the value of sales by 21.84% to $1.185 Billion. The average sale price increased by 21.51% compared to 2014 across the two months, which is a huge increase.”
The Group’s calendar year to date figures continue to run strong, with an increase of 12.97 % in the number of sales to 10,613, whilst the value of sales is up 24.8% to $6.002 billion.