Geelong hot spots where house prices have doubled the fastest

Homebuyers striving to put lifestyle and space at the top of their wish lists have been the biggest factor behind the Geelong region towns where home prices have doubled the fastest this year, according to new data.

The new PropTrack analysis of median price data reveals the hot spots where house and unit prices had doubled in the shortest time.

House prices accelerated faster than unit prices, the analysis showed.

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The lure of lifestyle areas played out across the housing market and in to the top suburbs where unit prices accelerated the quickest, particularly coastal hot spots.

PropTrack’s director of economic research Cameron Kusher said nationally, prices had increased by about 32 per cent since the beginning of the pandemic, and in certain areas, increases had been much greater than that.

“It doesn’t take a lot of demand in some of these smaller areas or a lot more buyers to really push prices up significantly, and that’s what we saw,” Mr Kusher said.

Rural Connewarre, wedged between suburban Armstrong Creek and coastal Barwon Heads, saw the median house price rocket from $1.28m in late 2019 to $2.57m last month.

Five towns on or near the Bellarine Peninsula make up five of the top 10, with Anglesea house prices recording the second-fastest growth stretching over 43 months.

GEELONG: TOP 10 HOUSE PRICES

Bellarine Property, Barwon Heads agent Peta Walter said the calibre of homes available to purchase has helped push median prices higher.

“A lot of people are really opting for lifestyle property,” Ms Walter said.

“Connewarre also includes the 13th Beach estate and that has become a destination of choice.

“It’s become a great place for young families. I think it’s a really good place for building and design. People can really showcase really high quality construction out there.”

GEELONG: TOP 10 UNIT PRICES

As vacant blocks at estates such as 13th Beach and Cashmore become more rare, the same pressures from a lack of available stock experienced in Barwon Heads for years has hit in Connewarre.

Tree-change areas proved equally lucrative for homeowners as sellers in Batesford, Meredith and Inverleigh seeing home prices double in less than five years.

Batesford has been a star performer just outside Geelong, with most buyers moving out from suburbs for big homes on large blocks.

It’s a similar story at Inverleigh, where the development of 1ha rural residential blocks has sparked a building boom that’s now evolved to relatively smaller 1 acre lots.

Gartland Geelong agent Michael Tricarico, who has sold plenty of real estate at Inverleigh, said the big blocks provided opportunities to upsize their house and land in the town 15 minutes from Bannockburn and 20 minutes from Fyansford.

“People are expecting to get some space and to have more of a country feel. It’s a lot of families,” he said.

Stockdale & Leggo, Bannockburn agent Dean Wilson said the sale of a 5 acre block sparked a building boom at Meredith, midway between Geelong and Ballarat.

“It would have been probably 2017-2018 that I sold a five-acre lot and in the middle of town and now that’s full of houses,” he said.

“It was affordable for first-home buyers and I’ve now on-sold a couple of the properties that they’ve done really well financially out of them.”

He said new people coming in were families who were putting their kids in to the local school.

Winchelsea was the cheapest town on the list, with the median house price moving from $315,000 to $650,000 in six years.

The changing fortunes has seen developers gobble up parcels of land on the edge of town, awaiting the inevitable rezoning for residential growth.

Local agent Geoff Bennett said serendipity saw McCartney open its Winchelsea office in 2018 just as the market took off.

“At that point the demand was extremely strong for the larger allotments with a variety of residences, regardless of their condition,” Mr Bennett said.

“I think people realise that it’s 20 minutes from Waurn Ponds, 25 minutes to Torquay to 21 minutes to Anglesea. The dual highway also reached Winchelsea, which began to draw a lot of people from the coast but also Waurn Ponds.”

Quite a few investors cottoned on as rental returns started to increase, he said.

But rising building costs has seen the pendulum swing to established homes in the town, where the Surf Coast Shire has been investing in significant parkland upgrades.

There’s no Covid hangover in Point Lonsdale and Queenscliff but a waiting list of people who relocated to the town, were still renting and wanted to buy the right property, said RT Edgar, Point Lonsdale director Felix Hakins.

Sellers were reaping the rewards, he said.

“The strength in numbers is a flow-on effect from Covid. People from Melbourne who had moved down and are renting at the moment and looking to purchase,” Mr Hakins said.

“We do have a good collection of buyers at the moment that are in that bracket. They are probably professional couples that might travel up to Melbourne and return.

“There’s a good transition in price points there right through those towns,” he said.

“I’ll probably say that more so there’s been demand for properties that are fully constructed and also people that are upgrading within the township and still want something a bit bigger and don’t want to go through the building process.”