Australia’s most affordable suburbs with strong capital growth

With a median house price in greater Sydney of more than $1.15 million, and the median house price in greater Melbourne around $915,000, properties under $500,000 start to seem appealing. But what if affordability and capital growth could be measured hand in hand?

Turns out, they can.

CoreLogic recently released its Top Affordable Suburbs Report, measuring Australia’s 100 best-performing affordable suburbs. ‘Affordable’ is defined as house and unit prices below $500,000, and ‘best-performing’ reflects strong capital growth in the last 12 months.

While affordable suburbs are located Australia-wide, many of those that had consistent median value growth were in Victoria. Coolaroo, only 16.8km north of Melbourne, headed the list, with a median value of $475,235, and growth of 33.4 percent in the last year.

Victoria had another 61 affordable performers out of the list of 100, and four out of the top five. Houses in Two Rocks, Western Australia, came in at number four, with a median value of $470,735, and capital growth of 29.3 percent in the last year.

“While a lot of the attention has been on the affordability of Tasmania, the Top Affordable Suburbs Report shows that when you also take long-term value growth into the equation, then Victoria has performed more strongly,” said Tim Lawless from CoreLogic.

After Victoria, NSW was the second strongest performing affordable state, with 20 suburbs in the list of 100. Tasmania had 12, Queensland four, Western Australia two, while neither the ACT nor the Northern Territory had any suburbs listed.

Sixty suburbs out of the list of 100 were housing market suburbs, and the remaining 40 had strong capital growth for units.

How were ‘top performers’ measured?

Only suburbs with a median value below $500,000 were measured by CoreLogic. Places with higher risk ratings, such as mining towns, were omitted.

Suburbs were then ranked highest to lowest based on their median value performance in the last 12 months.