A LONG undervalued Ballarat suburb has had a renaissance, being named Australia's top suburb for housing price growth in the past 12 months by Domain.
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Mount Pleasant - officially Ballarat's oldest suburb - founded in 1836 by the Yuille Brothers when they established a sheep run and today boasting a population of just over 2000, has been named Australia's most improved suburb for year-on-year house sale prices.
If the suburbs in the graphic do not appear on your mobile, press on the graphs to reveal the suburbs.
The Domain survey, which takes in sales figures until the end of June shows Mount Pleasant has a median house price of $336,000, a 26.2 per cent increase on the same time last year.
The suburb far outstrips Victoria's next highest earner, Wonthaggi, which has seen a 21.7 per cent increase in the same time.
Ballarat as a whole has bucked the general downward trend showing an overall 11.3 per cent year-on-year increase in the 12 month period to come in with a median price of $395,000, a $10,000 lift on the same figures in March.
President of the Mount Pleasant History Group Max Duthie said it was good to see that the rest of the country was catching up to what locals had always known.
"There's a whole lot of newish development happening on the end of Flockhart Street," he said. "There's a whole new subdivision going in there and we've had a lot of development being built around us.
"It's intriguing, there's definitely been a lot of people of people buying older houses and doing them up, but obviously we are seeing a lot of newer houses as well."
"I tend to think it's been long undervalued, initially it didn't have anywhere to go, it came from Barkly to Humffray streets and Elsworth Street didn't exist, it was Boundary Road and a dirt track. Behind us was all farm land until the Liberal (state) government acquired the land in the late 1970s and turned the bottom half into commission and top half into normal housing.
"It's hemmed in by natural features, it's quite a nice area to live."
At the other end of the spectrum, many of Victoria's high-end suburbs have seen a marked drop in prices over the 12 month period.
Incredibly, of the 10 suburbs to show to greatest decline across the country, eight are in Melbourne including St Kilda, Toorak, South Yarra and Hawthorn.
General Manager Ballarat Real Estate Allister Morrison said Mount Pleasant had been one of the stand out regions in recent times, but Ballarat as a whole had been strong.
"I know just in the last quarter, Redan went up 8.9 per cent in three months," he said. "But Mount Pleasant is definitely one of the stand out areas.
"I think Ballarat is coming off a lower base, affordability factor is there but what makes the figures even more remarkable is we've recorded those figures in the face of a downturn market in capital cities.
"They are dropping 10-20 percent, Ballarat has bucked the trend in terms of growth."
Mr Morrison said the certainty of no new taxes, low interest rates and any future changes to rail would make Ballarat even more appealing.
"Our projections for next three years in our view is stars have aligned for real estate in regional areas like Ballarat," he said.
"Ballarat's median house price has just clicked over $400,000, even with the downturn it's still half the value of Melbourne, so it's remarkably affordable."
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