A flower wholesaler bought Australia’s most expensive house in 2023 for $76million – scoring panoramic views of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House along with eight bedrooms, eight bathrooms and six car spaces.
The palatial property was 9,500 times the selling price of Australia’s cheapest house, which went for just $8,000 in the remote Western Australian town of Kambalda East.
The buyer of Australia’s priciest house, Leo Lynch, the Lynch Group’s former chief executive, made the purchase in May but didn’t settle until November – the month when the Reserve Bank raised interest rates for the 13th time in 18 months.
The heritage-listed house known as ‘Leura’ was built in 1891 and is located on Victoria Road, in ritzy Bellevue Hill.
The property price more than doubled in eight years after since wealthy Chinese businessman Wilson Lee and his wife Baoyu Wu bought it for $30.8million in November 2015.
The $76million selling price is eight times Bellevue Hill’s median house price of $9.371million and is 54 times Sydney’s already unaffordable mid-point price of $1.397million.
It is also almost 94 times Australia’s median house price of $811,707 or 9,500 times Australia’s cheapest house at Kambalda East in regional Western Australia that sold for $8,000 in June.
This house topped CoreLogic and PropTrack’s top 11 list of Australia’s most expensive homes sold in 2023 – and five of them were in Bellevue Hill – an exclusive suburb between Point Piper and beachside Bondi.
Victoria Road in Bellevue Hill is so prestigious it had three spots in the national top 11, while nearby Kambala Road in the same suburb had two places.
Sydney’s eastern suburbs had seven places in the top 10, Melbourne’s east had two spots, while the Byron Bay hinterland in the far north of New South Wales had one place.
Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, Sydney’s Northern Beaches, the Lower North Shore and Perth’s Swan River postcodes were all absent this year.
This meant the likes of Noosa, Palm Beach, Mosman and Cottesloe didn’t make an appearance on the elite list like they usually do.
Bellevue Hill was home to Australia’s second most expensive house, with a Kambala Road home containing four bedrooms, four bathrooms and four car spaces selling for $61.5million in May.
Melbourne entered the list in third place with a nine-bedroom house on Shakespeare Grove in Hawthorn selling for $41million in March.
But Sydney’s eastern suburbs dominated the list after that with a clifftop house in Tamarama in fourth place with a sale price of $45million.
In Bellevue Hill, another house at Kambala Road, two doors down, selling for $39.35million in September – putting it in fifth place – this one having four bedrooms and four bathrooms.
In nearby Vaucluse, a five-bedroom house with four bedrooms right on Sydney Harbour sold for $39million in October – putting this Queens Avenue home in sixth spot.
Another home in Vaucluse, on Vaucluse Road, was in seventh spot with a sale price of $36.2million in July buying four bedrooms, five bathrooms and six car spaces a short walk from Nielsen Park.
Bellevue Hill re-entered the list in eighth place with another Victoria Road house, this one with six bedrooms, five bathrooms and four car spaces, selling for $35million in March.
The only regional entry was a mansion, on 50 hectares of land, with six bedrooms, eight bathrooms and eight parking spaces at Picadilly Hill Road at Coopers Shoot, 10km from Byron Bay, selling for $33.65million in April – putting it in ninth place.
Melbourne’s second entry on the top ten list was a $33.5million house on Whernside Avenue in Toorak with three bedrooms and two bathrooms, with the April sale putting it in tenth place.
Rounding out the top 11 list was a seven-bedroom, seven-bathroom house on Victoria Road in Bellevue Hill, which sold for $33million in May 2023.
Cheapest houses
At the other extreme are remote, regional areas where houses typically sell for less than the price of a second-hand car, PropTrack data from realestate.com.au showed.
A three-bedroom house on George Cowcill Street at Kambalda East in Western Australia in June sold for just $8,000.
The home, built in 1969, has only one bathroom and had been home to a hoarder.
Houses that are cheaper than a top-selling new car are typically in the outback where it’s boiling hot in summer and freezing cold in winter.
A three-bedroom house at Coober Pedy in South Australia, 850km north-west of Adelaide, sold for just $19,000 in April.
That price also bought a three-bedroom house at Coolgardie in Western Australia, 555km north-west of Perth.
The cheap places are mainly inland with a house at Mount Magnet, north-west of Geraldton, selling for $23,000 in April as a house at Andamooka in South Australia went for $26,000.
For $30,000 this year, it was also possible to buy a house at Broken Hill in the NSW far west, Stirling North near Port Augusta in South Australia, and Morven, east of Charleville in western Queensland.
But not all of the ultra-cheap houses are near the desert, with a one-bedroom house at Armatree, north of Dubbo in the NSW central west, selling for just $30,000 in September.
Units
Australia’s cheapest and most expensive suburbs for apartments are both near water.
Point Piper has Australia’s most expensive median unit price of $3.317million, but a three-bedroom Sydney Harbour apartment on Wunulla Road in October sold for $15.7million.
Laguna Quays in north Queensland’s Whitsunday region has a mid-point unit price of just $92,428.
But a two-bedroom unit in June sold for just $79,500.
Market conditions
The Reserve Bank’s 13 interest rate rises in 18 months, taking the cash rate to a 12-year high of 4.35 per cent, are expected to slow the market in 2024.
Inflation is still high at 4.9 per cent with the RBA not expecting the consumer price index to return to the top of its 2 to 3 per cent target until late 2025.
But Stephen Halmarick, the chief economist at the Commonwealth Bank, Australia’s biggest home lender, is expecting inflation to ease back within the target range by late 2024, with rate cuts to begin from September next year.
‘Inflation is decelerating in Australia as well, but at a slower pace than some other nations,’ he said.
CoreLogic’s Best of the Best report forecast the housing market would slow down in early 2024 but regain momentum as interest rates were cut again.
‘Combined with an expectation that interest rates could hold higher for longer, households are likely to see their budgets further stretched, and more households may fall into acute financial stress,’ it said.
‘Market conditions could once again strengthen towards the end of the year however, if there is a loosening in monetary policy.’
