The million-dollar suburbs that just flipped in buyers' favour

Sydney Morning Herald

6 days ago

A range of sought-after locales are tipping into buyers' favour over winter, bucking the seasonal trend of shrinking pools of properties to choose from.
Nationally, total listings have fallen 7 per cent since mid-April – which typically marks the beginning of the winter market slowdown – Cotality (formerly CoreLogic) data shows. But Cotality's head of Australian research, Eliza Owen, said some regions saw overall listing numbers rise.
'It's unusual for this time of year, basically – usually you would be seeing total listings trending down because fewer people are putting listings on the market in winter,' she said.
'This could indicate these are buyers' markets because there are more homes on the market than a few weeks ago.'
The area with the biggest rise in the number of properties for sale was Melbourne's Bayside statistical area, which is mostly made up of the Bayside Council suburbs, including blue-chip Brighton and neighbouring Sandringham. The area's median value was $1.67 million, and there were 52 more homes for sale in early June than in mid-April.
Owen said some parts of Melbourne had subdued reactions to the Reserve Bank's cash rate cuts, which have been identified as the cause of a bump in buyer activity and sentiment.
'Areas like Bayside, which is a relatively high-end pocket of the market, and has a more subtle reaction to cash rate decreases,' she said.
Sellers could have decided to list because of the sentiment boost, Owen said, but found buyers to be less keen than expected. 'Buyers could be shying away because of an uncertain geopolitical environment and tariff uncertainty … Now may not be the best time to commit to buying a property.'