The Australian regions where property buyers are cleaning up
Affordability and lifestyle factors are driving home buyers to these regional areas, but it’s still a case of buyer beware
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Savvy property investors might do well to head to the regions for their next purchase, if market trends are correct.
That’s the news from CoreLogic’s quarterly regional Market Update, with data showing regional housing markets continuing to outperform properties in capital cities.
Mining regions in Queensland and Western Australia lead the charge once again, with regional towns in those states taking out the top 10 spots.
The Queensland town of Mackay was the top performer over the quatter, with 8.3 percent growth, followed by Geraldton in WA (8.2 percent) and Townsville (6.6 percent). Geraldton also experienced the strongest annual growth, up 28.7 percent. Western Australian regional towns also delivered the highest gross rental yields.
Report author and CoreLogic Australia economist Kaytlin Ezzy said affordability was a strong factor in the growth these areas had experienced.
“Regions like Mackay, Geraldton, and Townsville are seeing exceptional growth, driven
by affordability advantages compared to our major cities, as well as lifestyle appeal,”
Ms Ezzy said.
“This will have contributed to the strong demand but even with the impressive growth,
for those with the capacity to service a mortgage, they still remain attainable with
medians less than $600,000.”
However, CoreLogic noted that not all regional housing markets were showing signs of growth with Batemans Bay on the NSW far south coast the worst performer, seeing a fall in housing values of -2.7 percent. The Victorian town of Warrnambool was right behind, down -2.6 percent. The once-prosperous gold rush town of Ballarat in Victoria experienced the greatest fall over the year, down -6.3 percent.
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The typically busy spring season for the housing market was a dud, and the summer isn’t looking much brighter.
Housing services companies like Zillow Group and Rocket RKT +3.78% were loud and clear last week on earnings calls: Rocket CEO Varun Krishna called the quarter through June “one of the toughest spring housing markets in years.”
Jeremy Hofmann, Zillow’s chief financial officer, said on a conference call that the company predicted earlier this year that the market for mortgages would be flat. “We actually now think it’s going to be down low-to-mid-single digits,” he said.
The rest of 2026 will remain challenging for mortgage origination volume, says KBW analyst Bose George. The question now is what happens in 2027. “If mortgage rates remain [around] 6.75%, I think that’s going to be challenging even for next year,” he says.
But what’s bad news for mortgage companies could be a positive for bargain hunters. Buyers can expect prices to grow more slowly—or mildly decline—with less competition as long as mortgage rates remain unpredictable.
Mortgage rates at the beginning of the year were solidly below year-ago levels, notes Zillow senior economist Kara Ng. But they surpassed last year’s levels recently, she adds, referencing Freddie Mac’s weekly survey of 30-year fixed mortgage rates. Last week’s reading, at 6.69%, was higher than year-ago levels for the first time in 2026.
“From the affordability point of view, it’s going to get more challenging in the second half of the year,” she says. “And when affordability gets more challenging, that impacts sales and home price appreciation.”
Mortgage application data tracked by the Mortgage Bankers Association has cooled since the beginning of the year. The trade group expects that the number of mortgage originations in the remaining two quarters will lag behind last year’s levels, after exceeding 2025 levels in the first half.
Rocket’s early-stage data—which the company told Barron’s it derives from its brokerage Redfin, demand for its mortgage products, and signs in its servicing portfolio that a homeowner is preparing to refinance or move—“leads us to expect the third quarter mortgage market to be smaller than the second,” Chief Financial Officer Brian Brown, said on the company’s call. He added that such an occurrence is “something the industry has not seen since 2022.”
Prices will be about flat nationally, Ng says. Zillow’s most recent forecast, which shows how values are expected to change in the year ending June 2027, show them dropping in roughly half of the 100 largest U.S. metros for which data is available.
Buyers aren’t rushing in at a time when mortgage costs are rising and unpredictable. But those with the right combination of patience and cash could stand to benefit. “If you are financially qualified to buy a starter home, you are facing less competition and you’re more likely to get a price cut,” Ng says.
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