House prices in the Greater Geelong region corrected somewhat in the last quarter of 2022, with many suburbs experiencing negative growth, according to new data from the Real Estate Institute of Victoria (REIV).
Overall, house prices in Geelong dropped by 1.9 percent during the October-December quarter, with the majority of areas seeing less than two percent movement in prices in either direction.
Thomson had the biggest median price drop in the last quarter of 2022, falling by 7.5 percent, closely followed by Drysdale (-7.4%) and Newtown (-7.2%).
Suburbs with the largest growth in that quarter were Portarlington (+5.9%), Manifold Heights (+5.6%) and Barwon Heads (+4%).
Overall, Portarlington showed 15.3 percent growth through 2022, while Manifold Heights and Barwon Heads prices improved by 21.4 and 22 percent, respectively.
REIV president Andrew Meehan said the market self-correction was to be expected after a period of such huge growth.
“We’ve gotten so used to increase upon increase of prices, I think this report says we’re in a normal market now,” Mr Meehan said.
“If you look across the suburbs in the Greater Geelong area, you have suburbs that went up in the last quarter, and also some that went down, and to me that all points to a normal market.
“I think most people have forgotten what normal is, really. We’ve had growth on growth for a very, very long time.”
Mr Meehan said infrastructure and lifestyle were two factors that continued to drive performance in areas like Geelong.
“The properties that have performed the best have been what you would call lifestyle properties,” he said.
“Some reasonably sized land, good proximity to services and everything else. And slightly aspirational, too, would be the other factor.”
The market is expected to remain fairly stable for some time, Mr Meehan said, at least until around the middle of the year.
“My view is that once these interest rate rises are behind us – everything’s indicating that we’re going to see a reduction in the size of those rises and people seem to be factoring in those rises too – the prices will rebound again,” he said.
“I think we’ll see that in the spring market. But I’m not expecting prices to do anything significant between now and then.”
