Buying & selling in Ginninderra

If you have any friends, family, or work colleagues who are looking for a one beddy on the northside, feel free to let them know about this one. Walking distance to UC, this unit is mid-town Belco. With a health centre (lovely pool & serious gym) in the complex, this is a lifestyle apartment. The lift, extra-large carspace, and the tranquil outlook also might suit a downsizer. If you have someone in your life who might be looking for something like this, ping me and I would be happy to give them a private inspection.

Walkability is often on the mind of buyers, when choosing a location to buy into. But, it has also been a bit of trending topic in town planning discussions lately. I recently checked out the walk scores in the Ginninderra district, to see which are the most walkable suburbs in this area, at least according to this website. I was a little surprised by some of the results. Not surprising, I suppose, was that every suburb in Ginninderra was rated as 'car-dependent.' The motor car and the suburban project go somewhat hand in hand. But, I was very surprised that HALL Village was rated so badly, when it is actually the nicest place in Ginninderra to walk around. I guess that it should be no surprise, though, that CHARNWOOD had far and away the best ranking in the district for walkability with its bustling shopping centre with zero commercial vacancies and lots of medical services, professional services, churches, eateries and a large supermarket. It looks to me like walk scores for FLYNN, LATHAM & FRASER are probably benefiting from their proximity to CHARNWOOD. I was quite surprised, though, that EVATT did not rate a bit higher with three primary schools, two churches, a pharmacy, dentist and a doctor's surgery. It will be interesting to watch over the next few decades how our suburbs change in terms of walkability, if car ownership continues to decline among younger generations, car-sharing services become more widely adopted, and petrol cars are outlawed circa 2045.

If you own a house in Ginninderra, you are likely to get a little dopamine rush, if your suburb has an up arrow and a couple of percentage points in green. Similarly, you might have a pang, if you own a house in a suburb with a down arrow and a couple of percentage points in red. Headlines about changes up and down in the median house price are widely reported. For a lot of people, who are not watching the market too closely, changes in the median are the only indication they will get about what is happening in the property market. But, we have got to remember that it is the middle, not the average. I like to say that the median tells us more about what is selling than it tells us what they are selling for. For example, the $780k median in MACGREGOR suggests to me that there have been more sales in WEST MACGREGOR where the blocks are smaller. I seriously doubt anybody has managed to buy one of these old 1973 houses on a large block in OLD MACGREGOR for less than $780k this past twelve months. Another reason to be skeptical about medians, especially in Canberra, relates to the data set. These numbers come from allhomes. But, for the last five years, Internet listings have been very fragmented with very few agencies in Canberra listing on all of the paid listing platforms (allhomes, Zango and realestate.com.au). The medians published by aggregators like pricefinder or cotality (formerly CoreLogic) will be based on a bigger data set, but those who know know that comparable sales are much better than thinking too much about changes in the median house price.

Recently sold in BELCONNEN

Thanks to Jo and Flynn from Staged By Flynn for transforming a double brick apartment, painted very vanilla, into something more lovable. I liked how the colour palette of the staging seemed to harmonise with the big gumtree outside, and was not over-the-top, which I think can trigger a lot of buyers. And, thanks to the vendor for disregarding my attempts to dissuade her not to employ a stylist at this point in the campaign.

Source: zango.com.au

I was looking at the Top 5 sales in FLYNN, to see what the commonalities were.  A couple were knock-down-rebuilds, but most were older homes which had been internally renovated.  Most were two storey houses, but a couple were single level.  A couple were on the high side of the street, but most were on the low side of the street.  Most had 5 bedrooms, but a couple were 4-beddies.  A couple were in cul-de-sacs, but most were on through roads.  Most had 3 bathrooms, but a couple were just ensuite homes.  The block sizes varied from 767sqm to 1505sqm.  The main things they had in common, however, were they are all fairly high on the hill and were all sales in the last three years. 

It is the job of a real estate agent to make the process of selling a property easier. For most people, though, there is not too much about the process which is really enjoyable, apart from seeing a big boost to the bank balance after settlement. So, I was chuffed when someone was kind enough to say recently that I helped to make the process not only easier but more enjoyable.

To me, there seem to be certain benefits which sometime come from living on a busy street with through traffic, like bus stops, better street lighting, usually reduce crime statistics, and getting your UberEATS a bit warmer.  But, in the cul-de-sacs, you can see little kids playing with the neighbours’ kids, and there are dogs walking around safely, simply because there is no through traffic, and it seems to me that some people quite value that.  If you (dis)agree, you are very welcome to leave me a comment.

The emotional & rational benefits of buying a new home are probably such that even so-called 'negative people' find it a positive experience. Nice to be involved in something which has such a positive effect on people's lives.

There was some interesting data released this week by realestate.com.au, which compared growth in median sale prices for the last four years with the previous four years. So, naturally, I thought this would be a good opportunity to look at what has been happening in different parts of Ginninderra. When you graph it out, it looks like appreciation has been fairly consistent with just under half of the suburbs having a little over 50% appreciation in the median house price over the 8 years and a bit over half having around 60% appreciation in their median sale price. The only outlier to this was EVATT, which had a combined growth over 8 years of 71%. The data is missing for HALL and McKELLAR, perhaps because the sales volume was considered too low to calculate a meaningful median sale price. There are a few other patterns which stand out, when one looks at the graph. The price growth in Ginninderra houses had been quite modest in most Ginninderra suburbs in the four years leading up to the pandemic, compared to the long-term average. And then, all but one suburb had accelerated growth after the declaration of the pandemic. The graph shows that CHARNWOOD and MACGREGOR have each performed very well over this period in terms of house appreciation, which is in keeping with an Australia-wide trend towards more affordable suburbs. But, there still seems to be plenty of demand for the pricier suburbs as well, as seen by 60% growth in FRASER and 65% change in the median house price in NICHOLLS over this period.

If you know someone who would appreciate living in the Emu Bank precinct in a lakeview apartment, please feel free to let them know about this one. Happy to give them a preview, if they would like to get a head-start on the competition.