I's only because Shadow's prediction actually has a chance of being right that the bears are being so pedantic. You don't hear people arguing whether 40% crash includes 39.9% or 40.1%.
Arguing with a bear around here is akin to shooting fish in a barrel.
The property boom in 2014 has bumped the median house price of one in every four Sydney suburbs over the million-dollar mark.
With Domain Group data showing the median house for the city overall leaping 14 per cent to $837,786 over the past year, now a total of 204 suburbs out of the more than 800 Sydney suburbs (including the Central Coast and Blue Mountains) are members of the formerly much more exclusive million-dollar club.
That's an incredible 25.5 per cent leap from just six months ago when only 173 had met the magic million mark.
"It's an extraordinary development in Sydney's fortunes," says Domain Group's senior economist, Dr Andrew Wilson.
"Sydney has not just broken through the 200th suburb barrier, it's absolutely smashed it.
"It's another astonishing indication of how expensive the Sydney market is and how prices have blown out in the middle price ring regions.
"Perhaps even more surprisingly, we're now also seeing a number of suburbs in the Shire and in the south having medians over $1 million and becoming relatively expensive places, so prices are being pushed up from the bottom, rather than being dragged up from the top."
Most of the inner west, a region that's seen prices rise by 18 per cent over 2014 to a median, generally, of $1,275,000, are now members of the millionaires' club. New entrants include Erskineville, Newtown, Enmore, Leichhardt, Croydon Park, Dulwich Hill and Chiswick.
Belle Property Newtown agent Prue Halcombe says the inner west's relative affordability has helped push up prices.
"We've now caught up to certain suburbs of the east," she said.
"People are buying here out of preference because they can afford it.
Helping the rise of these inner west suburbs into the million-dollar club has been the transformation of many of the houses from share-house dumps full of students to designer homes for growing families with expensive tastes.
The numbers are in stark contrast with the rest of Australia. Melbourne has only 49 million-dollar suburbs, up from 43 six months ago, Perth 24, down from 26, Adelaide seven – up only one from June 2014 – and Brisbane just five, a figure that didn't change in the second half of last year.
Associate professor Stephen Whelan of the school of economics at the University of Sydney, and a spokesman for the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, says the rise has come about as the result of several factors. "It's about relatively low interest rates which makes borrowing more affordable, increasing investor activity taking advantage of negative gearing and, on a more fundamental level, high demand and constraints on supply.
"But I've been a bit surprised that prices have risen at such a rate over the last two years. But I'd be even more surprised if it continued at that rate much into the future.
There is more construction going on, increasing supply and interest rates will go up at some point."
Real Estate Institute of NSW CEO Tim McKibbin, however, has recently revised his forecasts that price rises won't continue strongly after an explosive start to the year.
"It would be unrealistic to say there'll be another 25 per cent jump in the number of million-dollar suburbs this next six months or year," he says. "But I suspect we will continue down that path of strong growth in numbers."
Yet while the latest revelation is good news for home owners in those suburbs, it does drive property even further out of the reach of those least able to afford it.
Australian Property Forum is an economics and finance forum dedicated to discussion of Australian and global real estate markets and macroeconomics, including house prices, housing affordability, and the likelihood of a property crash. Is there an Australian housing bubble? Will house prices crash, boom or stagnate? Is the Australian property market a pyramid scheme or Ponzi scheme? Can house prices really rise forever? These are the questions we address on Australian Property Forum, the premier real estate site for property bears, bulls, investors, and speculators. Members may also discuss matters related to finance, modern monetary theory (MMT), debt deflation, cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin Ethereum and Ripple, property investing, landlords, tenants, debt consolidation, reverse home equity loans, the housing shortage, negative gearing, capital gains tax, land tax and macro prudential regulation.
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