By Corey Everitt
In a time of steady growth in house prices, the outer metro is bucking the trend with Cardinia’s Lang Lang and Kooweerup recording the largest annual drop of house prices.
In Proptrack’s latest quarterly report, it showed a number of metropolitan suburbs which had dropped in value.
Many were in the peri-urban fringe of Melbourne with Lang Lang recording the most severe dip of close to six percent in the 12 months. Kooweerup was close behind with an almost 5 percent drop in median house prices.
Currently Lang Lang’s median price stands at $668,200 and Kooweerup at $691,000, measuring a drop of $39,000 and $35,000 respectively.
Area specialist’s Mark Sewell said despite the drop, the local market is stable.
“We’ve had a lot of growth and the pressure of interest rate hikes has been a factor,” he said.
“But I don’t think it is not as bad as it seems.”
Given the market is only still emerging from the pandemic, he says it should be viewed as a correction.
“It’s a fairly balanced market,” he said.
“It varies, I had one property that went up and in a week it was gone, and then you have others that stay up 30 or 40 days.
“I don’t think it’s either a buyers market or sellers market at the moment, it’s just balanced.
“To have a slight correction at 5 percent, it’s really not the biggest headache.
The railway towns also experienced a drop; Garfield experienced a 3 percent annual drop, Bunyip 2 percent, Longwarry 1 percent and Drouin 2 percent.
The hills also had a minor drop with a 1 percent dip from the last 12 months in both Emerald and Cockatoo.
Growth was strongest in the urban strip with Beaconsfield and Berwick both experiencing a growth of 4 percent, Beaconsfield edging to a seven figure median price at $959,000 currently.
Officer experienced an annual growth of 3 percent while Pakenham was slow at only 1 percent sitting at a median of $658,300.
Even though these areas grew, Sewell thinks there is still plenty of room for growth unique to Kooweerup and Lang Lang.
“My mantra has always been, dear today, cheap tomorrow,” he said.
“You get more bang for your buck, you get much larger blocks of land than you can get in Pakenham.
“The full dual carriageway down to here is coming so there will be more people coming through and with interest rates to ease later in the year, I think it’s sunshine and rainbows for Kooweerup.”
