The housing market in the southern Australian state of Victoria is very hot and Melbourne is leading the way. According to several recent articles in the Melbourne Herald Sun newspaper (www.news.com.au/heraldsun ), home prices are set to rise by 150% or more over the next 10 years.
One set of projections cited in the news report said that, based on past projections, median home prices in Melbourne will top $400,000 AUD sometime next year and be over $500,000 in 2010. That’s an increase of almost 10% per year, which is what has happened over the past 40 years in and around the city. With housing currently in great demand and supply no where near to meeting the needs, this trend could well continue.
A more conservative estimate in the same report noted that prices may well slow down, increasing at “only” 6% per year instead of the historical amount. That will still beat inflation by 3-3.5% and yield considerable returns on housing for a long time to come.
Outside of Melbourne, regional centers are also seeing their housing prices go up as well as people are moving out of the city to the country. Housing prices in the regional cities of Ballarat and Bendigo have seen median home prices more than double in the past five years. In Ballarat, a small city of 90,000 residents west of Melbourne, prices have gone up 63% to $220,000 AUD over the past five years. Bendigo, with slightly more 80,000 residents located northwest of Melbourne, has seen prices rise by 59% to 231,125. Both of these regional centers are a little over 100 miles outside of Melbourne.
With all the information showing that prices will only increase in the coming years, investors are looking to purchase sooner rather than later in Victoria. This is true for the international real estate buyer as well as the local ones
