Emerald City the country's most affordable

as posted here

IT has been dubbed the country's most expensive place to live but Sydney is in fact Australia's most affordable city.

A report on property in the country's capital cities names Sydney as the place with the most suburbs where the average property price falls under half a million dollars.

Of 1225 suburbs across Australia where the median house price is below $500,000, Sydney has 298, almost half of the city's total suburbs, according to the report commissioned by the National Australia Bank.

"This result is a little surprising, given that Sydney is the nation's most expensive housing market," said the report's author, Cameron Kusher of research firm RP Data.

"It does show that many suburbs still exist where affordable property is available."

General sales manager at McGrath Real Estate Matt Lahood said many of Sydney's first-home buyers trying to get their foot on the property ladder had unrealistic expectations.

"A lot of the buyers coming into the market want to kick off into the parkside and beachside areas," Mr Lahood said. "The perception of their dream area ends up not being the end reality."

Raine & Horne chief executive Angus Raine said the city was made up of a "series of tribes", some of which carried greater "snob value" than others.

"The second thing people ask you in Sydney is, 'Where do you live?'," Mr Raine said.

The Sydney suburbs picked out as the best places to buy houses were the western suburbs of Granville, Guildford, Toongabbie and Lidcombe, and Sutherland in the city's south.

Inner-city Ultimo, Rushcutters Bay and Chippendale along with Crows Nest on the lower north shore were the best places to buy units.

Elsewhere in the country, the NAB RP Data report, "Where to Buy under $500,000", names top suburbs as Banyo, Zillmere, Keperra, Coopers Plains and Salisbury in Brisbane; Werribee, Fawkner, Reservoir, Preston and Seddon in Melbourne; and Armadale, Kenwick and Cannington in Perth.

Sydney mother Kellie Denning, 34, and her husband, Shannon, 35, recently bought a $450,000 three-bedroom home on a 1000sqm block with a swimming pool in Greystanes in Sydney's west.

The couple had moved from the Blacktown area and believed trendy city areas such as Bondi were overpriced.

"We know the area well," Mrs Denning said. "My husband lived here until he was 28."

Mrs Denning said it took her husband 45 minutes to get to work in the city. "It's nothing ... (people) think because it's out west it's too far or not a nice area, but this is one of the nicest areas you could come across."

Housing Industry Association chief economist Harley Dale said he believed the results were attributed to Sydney spending so many years as the weakest housing market in the country. "You still have a lot of places in Sydney where the home value now is still lower than in 2003 and 2004 at the end of the boom," he said.

"I think it is conceivable it will stay that way for some time. We are not on the cusp of a house price boom ... you could be coming up with a situation with lots of affordable suburbs for some while to come."

Ray White chairman Brian White said Sydney was the place with the greatest mix of cheaper units amid highly priced properties, and there had been a clear move in the past 10 years towards families who were prepared to raise their children in a unit so that they could live in their desired area.

"You get stories of people prepared to pack their families into apartments in Bondi," Mr White said yesterday.


as posted here