Inner-city Bargains Still Exist

You may not have to move to the outskirts of the city to find a bargain. There are still some great opportunities within the city limits.

Recently rpdata.com did a comparison between the most expensive and the cheapest areas within different radii of the CBD and the results showed that while the affordable choices may not come with all the bells and whistles of the pricey suburbs, the price tag and land sizes were often surprising.

Understandably, the cheapies were more likely to be more than 30 years old, have a basic layout and were often in ‘original’ condition. But, most of them did come on generous sized blocks – a real bonus.

Also, surprisingly enough, rpdata.com found that in some instances, the more expensive median house prices were further from the CBD.

Okay, so what can I get for my money?

In Sydney, within 10km of the CBD, the most expensive suburb is Bellevue Hill with a median house price of $3,650,000 and the most affordable area is Sydenham sitting at $558,500. The Melbourne prices were a bit lower with Toorak taking top honours at $2,660,000 and the cheapest, Braybrook at $390,000.

Moving further out, Sydney’s most expensive areas mainly sat in the millions, only dropping below a million when you were 40km+ from the CBD. Whereas in Melbourne, you only had to travel 20km+ from the CBD to find a pricey area with a median house under a million.

Adelaide offered buyers the best chance with 21 per cent of suburbs within 10km of the city having a median price below $406,500. This was followed by Perth with 15.3 per cent and Brisbane with 13.4 per cent of suburbs sitting below their city medians of $495,00 and $470,000, respectively.

Looking at suburbs between 10-20km from the CBD, in all cities more than a quarter of the suburbs had a median house price below the city median.

Then, generally, the further away from the city, the houses tended to be more affordable.

Did your suburb measure up, have a look and see?