VIC For those Active in the Melbourne market....Is Melbourne cooling ?

Auction clearance rates have mainly been between 70 and 75% for about 18 months. Sometimes the numbers are very high. Melbourne is just ticking along nicely. Who's to say that this won't continue for some time. The rest of the GFC world is in recovery.
Melbourne boomed in 2010. If this is a regular cycle, the slow but steady growth in some fhb areas may keep going for a while yet.

 

Yep I'd call it holding for now.

 

Mixed market.

Resi that I look at - peak is pass. Things now sell for high end of market value, but not much more. Somtimes they sell for mid-range. Obviously still substantially higher than 2013/14.

Commercial/inner city CBD - still very hot, ridic prices.

Development sites (25000 sqm+ developments) - some planning headwinds, but with 2-3% yields cashed up people still buying.

Smaller development sites: still lots of competition because low entry barriers

Certain industrial/mid-ring commercial sites: struggling, peak has passed

 

Thornbury and northcote have both broken the record price for a home in the last couple of weeks.

The thornbury house featured in the article is mind boggling as its only a 3 bedder, quite far from a train station. Not a huge block either.

Thornbury house. Sold 1.8M
42 Speight Street, Thornbury, VIC 3071 | Recently Sold 3 bedroom House

This is the second most expensive property ever sold in northcote. Seems like a good price for 3 beds and one bathroom. Sold 3.05M
51 James Street, Northcote, VIC 3070 | Recently Sold 4 bedroom House


Article
Ugly duckling sets house price record in Thornbury

 

was looking at the doncaster market, lots of sub division sites Passed ins, seemed strange being it is so hard to purchase there

 

Was this price related or a lack of bidders?

 

Price seem ok from what i saw (i didn't go to doncaster this week) just looked at the auction results. For those who are not in melbourne, Doncaster is a suburb chinese investors buy. and has a high asian demographic from hong kong, china etc.

 

It's also ridiculously expensive for its location IMO. Median house price is $1,128,000!

 

that's pretty normal - it sometimes hit 1.5mil as well.

 

Honestly i haven't got a clue what the attraction of Doncaster is. Not close to CBD, no train station, a shopping center that is extremely hard to find a parking, it really isn't that special and for that sort of money there are nicer suburbs that are much better serviced. I heard its because of superstition that the Chinese like to live there and they are just flipping one property to another for higher and higher prices.

In relation to high prices being paid for resi houses right now, i am pretty sure only Chinese/foreign migrants/investors are purchasing these at over the top prices. From what i hear from agents Melbourne is definitely cooling, ever since Sydney started to cool, and the banks putting up rates, economy etc psychologically it affects what people are willing to pay. China's economic data is ever a concern for some. First home buyers are still out and about trying to get in under $600,000 to save on stamp duty, but other than that auctions are generally well attended but genuine bidders are few and competition is definitely waning in the few auctions i have been to.

 

same here i lived in doncaster just before blackburn road for couple years. hard to get to the CBD driving, mall was always food. The + is there's lot of eateries catering to asian cuisine in box hill.
Other than that, traffic is also bad.

well majority of chinese investors like to live closer to eateries and more like community that are similar to theirs. that's why you see there're many chinatowns across the world.

 

The numbers aren't making sense anymore as prices for land have had a massive rise. The area has come off a little in the last few months.

 

I wouldn't say it's ridiculously expensive but it's not cheap.

 

Being a native of Thornbury I have seen heaps of buy,knock downs and multiply town houses built.

Depending on spec they seem to sell for 550-600k

Sold Price for 3/9 Jones Street Thornbury Vic 3071

 

realestateview Saturday 14th November 2015

Clearance Rate 70%
Auction Results 1204

 

Wow clearance rates still holding up pretty strong for Melbourne. Consistent with the Corelogic RP data video for Nov State of the Market I just watched.

 

Update anyone on the ground??

 

@MTR went to bid in auction in Balwyn north for a place 200meters to Balwyn high school last week 40 degrees thought no one will turn up yet a crowd of 50-60 people rocked up. Were ard 4 bidders including myself. Was the last one standing till some mainland Chinese guy came in who kept upping the bids and then laughed at everyone after he won.

I know a few other auctions in Maidstone passed in as well as Doncaster

 

Stuff I look at is still pretty hot, blowing my mind away.

As an example, a small 133sqm warehouse I looked at just sold $1.75m vendor was only expecting $1.4m. He bought it in 2013 for $900k. Another 135sqm site around the corner sold $1.45m. Vendor bought it for $875k in 2014. Another 200sqm house in a not highly desirable part of a suburb most people never heard of sold $1.8m

Really really bad properties might struggle and there're some good values here and there. Saw a 900sqm house in Kew sell $1.7m after pass in. Was a development street too, could easily build 5-6 townhouses on there. Not best parts of the suburb but when you consider Mt Waverley sells $2m and Doncaster sells for similar prices, that's pretty cheap

 

Hi @Omnidragon ,

Do you know what sort of yield that warehouse is returning? Commercial property would be running hot for overseas investors if residential is too expensive now.