It’s partly subjective. A home can seem luxurious if you’re used to living in an apartment. For some people, it’s living in a premium suburb in what would be a fairly average home in a much cheaper suburb. If you look at pricing, a luxury home in Sydney could be five times the price of a luxury home in Adelaide. When selling homes, luxury is a popular term used in listings, particularly in suburbs where a lot of the homes are brand new. This month we take a look at a few measures of luxury.
Median prices of suburbs are well documented and can give us what would generally be considered luxury suburbs. 20 years ago, a home priced above $1 million was considered a luxury property but now won’t even get you an average priced home in places like Sydney, Canberra, Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast.
There are also significant regional differences. You may get a bigger home elsewhere but water views and proximity to Sydney means that Vaucluse is priced at the ultra premium end with a median price in excess of $8 million. One of Adelaide’s most expensive suburbs is Medindie however its median price is a comparative bargain at $2.6 million.
With these differences in luxury suburbs different according to location, a more consistent way is to perhaps look at the top five per cent most expensive suburbs to get a cut off point for a luxury suburb. This analysis is provided below. Based on this, a luxury home in Sydney would be priced above $4 million while in Melbourne that reduces to $2.5 million.
Another way would be to look at how luxury homes are described when they’re up for sale. Some of the suburbs that most frequently have the word “luxury” in their description are not priced within the luxury price thresholds outlined above. In Sydney, the suburb of Macquarie Park came up as most frequently having the word “luxury” in property listings. While there’s a lot of new development, it isn’t typically seen as a luxury suburb. This is also the case for Angle Vale in Adelaide and Baldivis in Perth. Meanwhile, some suburbs where we see the term “luxury” are considered higher end suburbs. These include Hawthorn East in Melbourne and Sandy Bay in Hobart.
When looking at luxury listings, the word luxury isn't often used but there are some consistent words - although there’s variation between capital cities. Not surprisingly, “large”, “open” and “space” come up a lot, all of which you’d hope for in a very expensive home.
The preferred geographic characteristics differ according to the city. In Melbourne, “village” is used a lot, in Sydney it’s “harbour” and in Adelaide it’s “park”.
