NSW Winston Hills / Baulkham Hills 2023

That's a loss with stamp duty and selling costs. That would have been a high price to have paid in 2021 by my reckoning. How do you know the sold price is in that range? Same agency for 2021 and 2024 sales...

 

Buying on a busy road is always a bit risky move as you will always have a smaller pool of buyers when sell back.

 

Not that busy, but the bus stop immediately in front is probably the bigger deterrent! With that in mind I think they overpaid in 2021 and sold for a fair price this year.

 

Yes , I've just noticed , the bustop is immediately in front house. Most of the people dont prefer

 

Sold for 2.475m, nice house but haven’t seen this level of price for single levels.

51 Crestwood Drive, Baulkham Hills, NSW 2153
https://www.realestate.com.au/sold/property-house-nsw-baulkham+hills-144371612

 

Isn't single level preferable if you have the space? It's a 4x2 with two living areas (plus additional entry area) and two car garage. Or do people enjoy trudging up and down stairs? Two levels is just a more economical way of adding size to houses. The 'single level suburb record' stuff that REAs come out with is generally just down to the size of the house. If I was choosing between the same size house single or two level it would be an easy choice for single level.

 

Other than personal preference, it also depends on the land area and if you have space left for a pool, backyard, etc. I don’t think this one has enough space left for a pool, for example.

 

Baulkham Hills update
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These days its plenty of room esp if there is side access although its narrow. Depends on any easement across the rear yard too

 

There's such a huge range of house ages, styles size and building construction types throughout Baulkham Hills, which itself is such a large area for a suburb that it's difficult to place much value in suburb averages. Interesting that there are more listing up currently compared to last months. Last year around this time it was pretty quiet in term of number of listings.

 

I pay close attention to WH/BH and Hills in general.

Over dinner was just reading the latest sales figures from one of the prominent agents around here and they prices are higher than ever. I was just looking at a very old home 4/2/2 sell for close to $2M. It going to need $500k+ in renovation.

Pretty damn expensive and I dont even know who can afford these homes at these prices. I know many work colleagues cant borrow anywhere near enough to buy anything around here and they all making $150k+ each.

 

From what I have seen at auctions it's mostly older purchasers (you would assume they've well and truly already long been on the property ladder), or often with extended family/multi-generartional (a.k.a. they have an older relative with them guiding the bidding). There has been a couple where the purchasers were quite young 'professionals' with no present signs of family assistance. And then also a strong share of buyers that gave the appearance of being or having foreign connections. The shifting demographics in the area also speak to who is buying property here. One Real Estate agent proudly boasts that he spruiked the area (mostly Castle Hill) to Chinese buyers several years ago after areas that they were traditionally looking in were being priced out by other wealthier Chinese buyers.

 

Unfortunately that's Sydney. Gotta buy a townhouse or duplex or look elsewhere if you can't afford a house.

In Epping area, a median house was about 700k in 2008. Now it's 2.3 million. (Just off this.... 16 years and its gone up 1.6mill!! That's 100k per year on average).... Stamp duty has increased due to the sale price from around 25k to around 100k.

I just listened to a podcast (ABC "If you're listening"), homes in Tokyo are not expensive. Reason being, it used to be like Sydney, getting more and more unaffordable. The Government of the day took over, let developers buy out house owners and development was pretty much allowed anywhere and everywhere in Tokyo. Councils who previously had to listen to their local communities lost their control, residents couldn't protest (well, they could but it made no difference) - "Nimbys" didn't have a say any longer. So enmass, houses everywhere turned into apartment blocks. Home prices fell everywhere because homes were widely available. Also Japan has death taxes, so any estate you have gets taxed at 50%, making passing on wealth through property to your heirs not really so much of a thing.
Japan has a very low birth rate and also doesn't have migrants coming in (not like a lot of other countries anyway). Home prices can only go down in Japan imo.
At least it's good for anybody young. Being able to afford a home to live in...

Ok people can afford to buy apartments in Sydney, but apartment dwellers see all the people who bought houses (mainly people older than them) and getting so wealthy as a result....
Relying on wealthy parents.... it's not such a good thing for society imo.

 

You raise an interesting point when you say big development and supply of apartments in Tokyo led to home prices falling. I can now see how with more homes available. But until now my thoughts were apartments replacing houses meaning houses becoming even scarcer and so in fact increasing in value as a result. So aside from developers buying one's house, do you think Sydney house prices would increase or decrease as a result of more apartments?

 

Median prices can fall while individual property prices rise.

 

I think it would be like HK, houses way out of the reach of everybody.

But at least people would have somewhat affordable apartments to live in....

 

I'm thinking maybe house prices help lift unit prices in the same suburb rather than units dragging down house prices. But supply is supply and a bucket load of apartments may well lower house prices at least a bit. My thinking is it's still 2 distinct buyer markets, that the thought of a future apartment explosion/glut may in fact lead to sentiment away from buying them and towards buying houses, and that's where we are probably at now. Furthermore it seems we're struggling to build them anyway. But it does make sense that when (and it's a big when) they are built en masse, then their relative cheapness will probably drag house prices down, at least once they become old, so a long long time away, and probably a pile of more people by then too.

 

Only way is up, too many people coming in and builders going broke left right and centre. Who wants to buy an apartment when you could end up like the Mascot Towers and lose everything? Even if the house is a dud the land value offers a hard floor on pricing.

Aus is still relatively cheap compared to other major cities for what you get for your money.

 

Or in the cage home?
'Cage Homes' in Hong Kong a Stark Reminder of Its Inequities

 

Sydney will 100% become like HK/Singapore where no1 can afford free standing houses and everyone living in units/apartments/Duplex's. Yes we have large land but 90% of Australia's land is not suitable for habitation. The areas that are will soon run out unless we build up.

This in turn will make free standing homes more and more expensive and make units/apartments the main method of housing for ppl.

I think we all just need to get used to this scenario. The world population just keeps growing, Australia just keeps growing and it must if we are to keep up as a 1st world nation and to provide the workforce as the older generations age and require the support.

Its a never ending circle. We will get to a point within the next 30 years Id say that living in a house is a complete luxury and out of reach for 90%+ of ppl.