By Gabrielle Costa
MELBOURNE’S inner West is bucking a metropolitan trend and – on the whole – is recording ever-increasing prices for home sales.
Vendors in Footscray, West Footscray, Seddon, Yarraville and Braybrook enjoyed some of the biggest increases at the fall of the auctioneer’s hammer, but buyers in Kingsville were getting a slightly better deal than they had been over the past year.
The Victorian Property Sales Report is released every three months by the Department of Sustainability and Environment. The most recent report relates to the three months from July to September 2007 and covers the whole of Victoria.
Across metropolitan Melbourne, median house prices fell slightly in the September quarter, down 0.7 per cent to $365,000. Locally, though, things were considerably brighter for those who put their homes on the market.
The data show that for the July to September quarter of 2007, median house prices were:
• $424,000 in Footscray, from $343,750 a year earlier and 3.2 per cent higher than the previous three months;
• $418,000 in West Footscray, up from $347,000 a year earlier, but only marginally higher than the $415,000 median in the preceding three months;
• $535,000 in Seddon, up 36.5 per cent for the year and 9.1 per cent higher than the previous quarter;
• $505,000 in Yarraville, 28.2 per cent higher for the year and up 6.5 per cent on the previous three months;
• $450,500 in Kingsville, down from $500,000 in the previous three months and 3.1 per cent lower than they were a year earlier;
• $412,250 in Maidstone, more than a third more expensive than a year earlier, when the median was $304,000;
• $563,250 in Maribyrnong, 15 per cent higher for the year and up from $525,000 in the three months to July;
• $290,000 in Braybrook, rising more than 30 per cent over a 12 month period. A year earlier, median house prices in that suburb were $222,000.
The data is older than that released last week by the Real Estate Institute of Victoria.
