We have continued to see the Melbourne property market perform well, overall, we would say the market is patchy with some properties selling extremely well while others have been sitting on the market for long periods of time, perhaps in part due to unrealistic price expectations. We bid at an Auction in Bell St, Hawthorn where the property sold close to a $1m over the original quote range.

Figures reveal widespread increases throughout the state, with increases driven by the city’s outer suburbs, which saw house prices jump 2 per cent. Additionally, the city’s20 top performing suburbs for house price increases over the last quarter were dominated by entrants from its outer fringe, notably Keysborough (up 13.2 percent), Rye (13 per cent) and Ringwood East (12.2 per cent). A by-product of the city’s widespread growth, suburbs in Melbourne’s east experienced strong price growth in the three months to September, culminating in Upwey entering the million-dollar club with a median house price of $1,060,000.

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The portion of investor-owned listings has ballooned to 60 per cent across Melbourne city over the three months to the September quarter, up from56.7 per cent from the previous quarter and a sharp jump from the 50.9 per cent share a year ago. This is no doubt being driven my culminating factors including the state recently cutting the tax-free threshold for land tax from $300,000 to $50,000, imposing new yearly flat fee and increasing the rate of tax payable on properties over $300,000 by 0.1 percentage point. There has also been changes to expand the Vacant residential land tax which will apply to properties unoccupied for more than six months to a year.

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Many had predicted that we would see a sharp increase in stock in Spring which is traditionally the ‘hot’ selling season. While there has been an increase in stock levels much of what we have been seeing coming onto the market has been compromised due to location, proximity to trainlines, main roads or needing extensive work. It will be interesting to see if 2024 sees an increase in quality of stock.