The suburbs in Australia where home sellers are making a $1 million profit

Home owners in some suburbs are making a $1million profit when they sell.

Real estate data group CoreLogic has calculated median vendor profits across Australia.

On Sydney’s affluent Upper North Shore, the difference between what a seller originally bought and later sold their house for was typically in the seven figures with residents commonly living there for almost nine years.

The mid-point profit in the Ku-ring-gai Municipal Council area was $1,081,250 in March 2021, the highest in Australia.

This area stretching from Roseville to Wahroonga also has a low jobless rate of just 2.8 per cent, a level significantly below the national average of 5.1 per cent in May, a CommSec analysis of Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed.

Even the more affordable homes in this area on the North Shore train line are typically double Sydney’s median house price of $1.186million. 

At nearby Hunters Hill, on Sydney Harbour, sellers typically made a profit of $1,011,500 putting it ahead of Woollahra’s $905,000 in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

Sydney’s Northern Beaches was next on $856,300, followed by neighbouring Mosman on $775,000, putting it only slightly ahead of The Hill Shire, in the city’s outer north-west, on $737,000.

Sydney took out nine of top ten spots for real estate profitability, with seven of them north of Sydney Harbour.

In Australia’s biggest city, 93.6 per cent of homes sold for a profit but on the Northern Beaches it was 98.4 per cent, slightly ahead of Woollahra’s 97.4 per cent. 

Melbourne’s Bayside area, taking in upmarket Brighton and Sandringham on Port Phillip Bay, was eighth on the overall list, with a median profit of $686,000.

Regardless of where a home is sold, house sellers were much more likely to make a profit.

‘Units were more likely to sell at a loss than houses, and owner-occupiers enjoyed a higher incidence of profitability than investors,’ CoreLogic said.

Sellers who made a profit had typically owned the home for 8.7 years.

But pockets of Sydney with more home units had a higher proportion of loss-making sales, with 16.1 per cent of homes in Strathfield selling at a loss compared with 15.6 per cent in Parramatta and 15.6 per cent at Botany Bay.