Strong home price rises may mislead

A Healesville real estate agent says homebuyers and sellers should be careful when comparing property prices in the area.

The Real Estate Institute of Victoria released figures showing Healesville, which the report classifies as a Melbourne suburb, as almost outranking the growth in median house prices compared to other Melbourne suburbs.

Healesville is shown second in a list of the top 20 annual growth suburbs, with the median house price 14.2 per cent higher in November2011 than 12 months earlier.

But Healesville’s First National Real Estate agent Mark Gunther said the list doesn’t compare “like with like”, as Healesville had a large variety of properties that could skew the results. “If we get a big sale on a Dalry Road property of 40 acres for $1.2 million, and then a little place in Badger Creek is sold for $280,000, that destroys the median,” he said.

But Mr Gunther said that doesn’t mean property news was all doom and gloom for the area.

“By Healesville standards we have a lot of people coming in,” he said.

“We’ve seen some good things happening over the past five years we have first home couples, people upsizing, and people downsizing, especially those on big properties who don’t want to move down the line.” He said Healesville had an interesting trend with more townhouse-type buildings and smaller allotments for what is being called the “low maintenance life style”.

But he implored buyers and sellers to look at each sale situation on its own merit The data was recently released by the Real Estate Institute of Victoria, showing the majority of the top 20 suburbs’ figures had risen between 5 and 8 per cent compared to Healesville, and the top ranking Western suburb of Derrimut

First National Real Estate Mark Gunther

Source: Mountain Views Mail – Healesville 10 January 2012