Million-dollar club: 800 suburbs join since 2015
It makes sense, back then the median house price in NSW was just $550,000, and most other states had medians in the $400,000s. In Tassie and South Australia, a typical house cost $280,000 and $368,000, respectively.
Fast forward to 2025, and the number of suburbs in the million-dollar club has almost quadrupled to 1073. That's a further 800 suburbs where a typical house costs more than $1 million, according to a new analysis of PropTrack data.
Many of them were coastal regional areas where houses were comparatively cheap 10 years ago – almost 80 of them had medians of $500,000 or less in 2015, and in some a typical house could be picked up for under $450,000.
For example, in the NSW suburb of Tweed Heads West near the Queensland boarder, the median house price was $398,500 a decade ago. It would now set a buyer back $1.04 million to pick up a typical house – an increase of 161%.
The analysis included suburbs with 30 or more sales in the year to May 2025, and only considered house prices – not unit prices or overall dwelling medians.
Sunrise Beach and Noosa Heads in QLD took the top spots for growth during the decade – with prices increasing from $580,000 to $2.01 million and $690,000 to $2.225 million, respectively, between May 2015 and now.
Suburbs which entered the million-dollar club after seeing growth of more than 200% were all coastal areas in NSW and Queensland, suggesting buyers have increasingly placed a premium on spots offering a beach-side lifestyle.
Queensland's cheapest 2015 suburbs to have $1 million plus medians in 2025 included suburbs of the Gold Coast such as Hemmant and Highland Park and suburbs of Noosa including Pomona and Cooroy.
Of Victoria's cheapest 2015 suburbs to grow to a $1 million-plus median in the decade, regional areas dominated the list, including Bright in the state's north, Bittern on the Mornington Peninsula and Manifold Heights in Geelong.
Victoria's most expensive suburb, Toorak, fell out of the country's top 10 most expensive suburbs between 2015 and 2025, as did Deepdene in Melbourne's leafy inner-east.
The most expensive suburbs in Australia are now all in NSW, as Melbourne prices have softened in the years since the pandemic.
What's more, nine out of the 10 most expensive suburbs have median prices of more than $5 million and the number of suburbs where a typical house cost more than $2 million is now 226 – an increase of more than 200 when compared with 2015.
Just three suburbs had median house prices of more than $3 million a decade ago, and none were in the $4 million club.
That number is now 76, and 27 of those had medians of more than $4 million – all of them bar one (Toorak) were in NSW.
In WA, all the suburbs with a $1 million-plus price tag in 2015 were in Perth's beach- and river-side suburbs close to the city, including Dalkeith, Cottesloe and City Beach.
The state now has 56 more suburbs with six-figure medians and many are in inland areas traditionally not considered premium. This highlights the rapid-price growth seen in the state in the past five years in particular due to population increases and a lack of supply.
In South Australia, just two suburbs had a median house price of $1 million or more in 2015, now there are 73. In Tassie just one suburb is currently in the club – Sandy Bay – which had a median of $640,000 in 2015.
The ACT saw and increase of 32 suburbs hitting the $1 million threshold – up from two in 2015. There we no suburbs with a $1 million-plus median in the Northern Territory.