NSW's cheapest houses rose 11.5% last year. The most expensive went nowhere. [OC]
I pulled every residential sale out of the NSW Valuer-General's settlement register and split it by price percentile instead of looking at a single median.
Q1 2025 vs Q1 2026. Same 253 suburbs, non-strata houses, minimum 20 sales per suburb per quarter. About 10,000 sales per side.
| Percentile | Q1 2025 | Q1 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10th | $435,000 | $485,000 | +11.5% |
| 25th | $640,000 | $700,000 | +9.4% |
| 50th | $920,000 | $1,000,000 | +8.7% |
| 75th | $1,330,000 | $1,410,000 | +6.0% |
| 90th | $2,065,000 | $2,075,000 | +0.5% |
The bottom of the NSW market rose more than twenty times faster than the top. A median on its own would have told you +8.7%.
The trend holds across every quarter, not just the two endpoints
| Quarter | Sales | 10th pct | Median | 90th pct |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 Q1 | 10,160 | $435,000 | $920,000 | $2,065,000 |
| 2025 Q2 | 17,461 | $450,000 | $950,000 | $2,113,500 |
| 2025 Q3 | 13,581 | $464,000 | $980,000 | $2,169,000 |
| 2025 Q4 | 12,679 | $475,000 | $977,000 | $2,155,000 |
| 2026 Q1 | 9,883 | $485,000 | $1,000,000 | $2,075,000 |
The 10th percentile rises every single quarter. The 90th ends roughly where it started.
The data are up to the end of March 2026, so before the 12 May budget changes. So whatever is driving the cheap end was already running before the budget changes.
Is this just cheaper suburbs selling more often?
No. I also measured every suburb against its own 2025 median, then grouped by how expensive that locality was. This removes composition entirely, because each suburb is only ever compared to itself.
| Suburbs grouped by 2025 median | Suburbs | Median change |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest fifth ($215k to $640k) | 51 | +15.5% |
| ($640k to $850k) | 51 | +11.4% |
| ($850k to $1.06m) | 51 | +12.1% |
| ($1.06m to $1.40m) | 50 | +9.3% |
| Most expensive fifth ($1.40m to $6.42m) | 50 | +5.2% |
So, the typical suburb in the cheapest band saw its median price rise 15.5% over the year
Is this just the regional boom?
Partly, but no. Regional NSW did outgrow Sydney, 11.8% against 8.5%. But the same pattern holds inside each region on its own:
| Region | Cheapest third | Middle third | Most expensive third |
|---|---|---|---|
| Greater Sydney | +12.1% | +9.0% | +5.0% |
| Rest of NSW | +15.5% | +11.5% | +10.4% |
Cheap Sydney suburbs grew more than twice as fast as expensive Sydney suburbs. Being regional lifts growth across the board, but it doesn't explain why cheap suburbs beat expensive ones everywhere. Greater Sydney here is the ABS statistical boundary.
Source: NSW Valuer-General weekly sales files.
Contract date basis, not settlement date.
Non-strata sales only, as a proxy for houses.
Suburbs need 20 or more qualifying sales in both quarters, which leaves 253 of them.
A sale only appears in this data once it settles, which can take months.
So the most recent quarter is always missing some sales that haven't come through yet.
That would be fine if the missing ones were random. But they are not.
In Q1 2025, sales that took more than 150 days to settle had a median of $1.51m, against $1.05m for the quick ones.
Slow settlements are expensive settlements. So any recent quarter is missing a chunk of its most expensive sales, which makes its top end look weaker than it really is.
Left uncorrected, this looks like expensive homes falling in price. They were not falling pre budget. The sales just haven't been recorded yet.
To avoid it, I counted only sales that settled within 90 days of contract, in both quarters, so each one is equally complete. Here is what happens if you don't:
| Settlement window | 10th pct | 90th pct |
|---|---|---|
| 90 days | +11.5% | +0.5% |
| 120 days | +11.1% | -0.8% |
| 150 days | +9.9% | -2.6% |
The bottom end figure barely moves across all three.
Happy to run any specific locality if you want to see it.