By ANEEKA SIMONIS
PROPERTY owners spent more than $1 billion snapping up houses and land in Cardinia Shire in the past year, according to the 2015 Valuer-General Victoria’s Report.
Unsurprisingly, detached house sales were the hottest buy – forming 51 per cent of the total number of sales recorded, closely followed by vacant land sales which took out 28 per cent of the recorded total.
Of the 3066 recorded sales, including farming land, industrial and commercial properties – residential sales were overwhelmingly high, forming 90 per cent of total sales.
Demand in housing comes as the shire’s population continues to boom.
The population, estimated to reach over 90,000 people by the close of this year, will nearly double within the next 20 years, according to council which predicts 174,993 residents will call the area home by 2036.
Meanwhile, house prices in the shire have skyrocketed in the past 30 years.
In 1985, 514 homes were sold for a median price of $65,000 compared with 1579 homes sold at more than five times the median value last year.
This year alone, 211 homes and 29 apartments have already been sold while 37 vacant land blocks have been sold to wannabe home owners looking to set up in the shire.
Though apartment and land sales have soared in decades gone by, the report indicates recent sales values have taken a slump, with the median apartment price sliding $15,000, or six per cent, since 2013, while median land prices took a $3000 dip in the past two years.
But it’s onward and upward for houses, priced at their highest on record at a median value of $359, 000.
The report also revealed that more properties were sold in the City of Casey than in any other Victorian municipality.
Sales in Casey more than doubled those recorded in Cardinia Shire, which recorded 7570 sales valued at over $3 billion.
On average, the median price of a house in Casey is 12 per cent greater than those in Cardinia Shire.
In Casey, 554 houses have been sold since the beginning of the year, along with 61 apartment and 36 blocks of vacant land.
