Sustainability goes mainstream for Australian property buyers
Green is the new black among prospective homebuyers
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The number of for-sale listings promoting eco-friendly inclusions in homes has jumped in recent years as would-be buyers prioritise sustainability, new research reveals.
Analysis by Ray White shows a clear trend in what the real estate group has dubbed ‘green listings’, with energy and water-saving features the most frequently mentioned in ads.
“Over the last three years, there has been an increasing proportion of listings with ‘solar panels’, ‘battery’ or ‘off-grid’ appearing in advertising copy,” Ray White data analyst William Clark said.
“This is not an exhaustive list of ways a house can be green, however solar panels were the most frequently advertised, while batteries and being off-grid make a house green to the greatest degree.”
Sellers are responding to increased demand from homebuyers but regulatory changes in some states, including laws against gas connections in new builds, are also driving the trend, Mr Clark said.
Most listings with green features mention just one, he added.
“Although, it is also becoming more frequent over time to see two to four and even five green features per house. In 2023, we even saw eight listings with five green features.”
Queensland had the highest proportion of green listings (20.3 per cent) in the 2022-23 financial year, followed closely by the Northern Territory (19.6 per cent) and South Australia (19.5 per cent).
The country’s two most populated states, New South Wales and Victoria, had the lowest proportion of green listings with 11.4 per cent of all ads each.
“There’s no denying that all states have sufficient physical space to support more properties with rainwater tanks and a self-powered grid, but we saw in the results that Queensland, with large amounts of wealth along the coast, had the most green listings,” Mr Clark said.
“Meanwhile, New South Wales had a lot of ground to cover in last place. As the industry modernises and more laws are put in place, will 2024 see even more green listings?”
The findings mirror analysis by data house PropTrack earlier this, which found 55 per cent of surveyed Australians rate a home’s energy efficiency as being “extremely important”.
That figure was up 17 per cent on the same period last year, perhaps indicating the desire to save money during the cost-of-living crunch, the research concluded.
The analysis found solar power was the green feature most searched for (71 per cent) while other items on property searchers’ wish lists included double-glazed windows, effective insulation, hydronic heating and electric vehicle charging.
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Developers spent Dhs125 billion acquiring land in Dubai across the first seven months of 2026, according to Dubai Land Department data, as companies continued building their inventories of development sites ahead of a new project cycle.
The 7,981 land transactions accounted for approximately 8 per cent of the 99,900 total sales transactions recorded in the period, but a disproportionate 39 per cent of the Dhs321 billion in total real estate sales value — a figure that also includes residential units, villas and buildings. Market activity averaged around 1,140 land transactions a month, worth approximately Dhs17.8 billion.
Me’aisem 2 recorded the highest land-sale value of any area, with Dhs10.4 billion across 544 transactions, followed by Al Yalayis 5 with Dhs7.14 billion across 907 deals. Al Ruwayyah 1 ranked third by value despite just three major transactions, worth a combined Dhs6.3 billion. Palm Jebel Ali, Umm Suqeim I and Al Yalayis 1 rounded out the next tier, while Palm Jumeirah recorded Dhs2.4 billion across 44 deals.
The concentration of value in a small number of land transactions — as seen in Al Ruwayyah 1’s three deals worth Dhs6.3 billion — reflects the scale of individual site acquisitions in Dubai’s primary land market, distinct from the smaller residential resale transactions that make up the bulk of deal volume.
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