I usually use domain.com to get median prices. Domain.com get their data from the land office which is a good place to get real sales data from. However the REIV gets their data from sales reported by realestate agents. :: REIV - The Real Estate Institute of Victoria Ltd. :: I had a look at their figures and they are crazy. B All these suburbs are up 20-50% over the last 12 months. Are these real gains or just pumped up realestate agent figures designed to get buyers in the market to up their bids for property? If you compare the same suburbs in domain.com, they are completely different to the REIV figures. Domain.com is showing upwards of 25% gains in the same suburbs showing 50-90% gains via REIV. What I suspect is the method the REIV use is flawed. They publish figures based on agent reported sales. Now we all know how Realestate agents work. I'm sure they would think to them selves "We report only how higher priced sales, and we will skew the medium price published by REIV thus making buyers panic and pay more for property" Am I on the money here or am I way out?
Hi CRC, I'd be more inclined to follow the domain over REIV as domain is owned by fairfax. Cheers, Dan
REI will always be seeking to push their own interests- that's the nature of selling agents. It is amazing, however, that the rates published vary so much, as they theoretically "should" be sourcing their data from the same place- the Valuer Generals office. I think you will find it depends on their method of interpretation as to how the stats actually are produced. Terry Ryder recently examined this in a recent article- see part of what he says below: Feature topic: Confusion reigns as the industry rains dodgy data It's not a new problem but it seems to be getting worse. The muddle of conflicting statistics constantly churned out by the residential property industry is making it almost impossible for anyone to pinpoint which markets are doing well and which are not. Here's an example. What is the median house price is Perth at the moment and where does it sit in relation to Melbourne's and Sydney's? According to the RP Data-Rismark Hedonic Index, it's $505,000, the highest in the nation outside of Sydney and $100,000 higher than Melbourne's. The Real Estate Institute of Australia says it's $446,000 – just $26,000 higher than Melbourne's. If you believe RP Data, Perth had a higher median price than Sydney until recently. But now it's $55,000 lower. The REIA says Perth's median house price is $80,000 less than Sydney's while Australian Property Monitors records a value gap of just $25,000. Melbourne's median house price is $403,000 or $$420,000 or $395,000, depending on whose figures you choose to believe. In Adelaide, the median unit price is $246,000 according to Residex, $228,000 according to Australian Property Monitors or $281,000 if you believe the RP Data-Rismark Hedonic Index. The Residex figures claim that the highest capital growth for houses over the past 12 months has been seen in Brisbane (14.6%), followed by Darwin (14%), Adelaide (13%) and Melbourne (12%). Canberra did only 9.5%, Sydney 4.1% and Perth only 3%. I could go on – and on – but you get the picture. And the picture is a mess – a muddle of conflicting information, constantly being spewed forth by the property research industry and regurgitated without scrutiny or analysis by a lazy media. The outcome is a headache for property buyers and sellers trying to make sense of what's happening in the market. If you're a serious and diligent investor, this is big concern. Take an exercise I was doing recently to determine what's happening in Gladstone. This industrial port city is one of the nation's most compelling hotspots, with massive infrastructure development fuelled by the resources boom creating an influx of workers looking for someone to live. So I want to know how prices are moving. The trends and anecdotal evidence suggest they're rising rapidly....
I bought property in late 2005 in one of those 40+% "B" suburbs The market at that time was flatish to slightly up. I got a great price by buying privately as the auctions seemed to be achieving goodish prices by late 2005. I came back into the market in very early 2006, and it was clear even from January (before any auctions had taken place), from the attendance levels at open houses in the blue chip suburb I was looking at, that there were a lot more buyers around than late 2005. Well by February when the first auctions of the year took place it was obvious that the market wasn't just "up", someone had put a huge rocket under that segmant of market over the xmas break and lit the fuse. I have no idea what happened over that xmas break, but something clicked and simultanuously a lot of buyers had a lot bigger buying budgets. It's interesting just how long it takes for the ripple to spread a bit and then to be reflected in the figures. My observation though is that the lift off in Melbourne began in Jan 2006, with the stage 2 booster kicking in in Jan 2007.
What REIV is quoting is accurate . Suburbs such as Malvern, Armadale ,Toorak are clearly up 20% since January 2007. $1 million properties would sell for $1.2 ++ and $3 million are going for well over $3.5 million. On this occasion there is no Industry spin. Regards Denis
