THE extension of the State Government's $20,000 first home owners grant until June 30, 2021 could be the catalyst for Ballarat's housing bubble to remain strong despite a predicted housing downturn.
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While some experts predict house prices could fall by as much as 30 per cent, for regional Victorians that could mean a housing boon as more and more people search for their first home.
And with less investors taking to weekend auctions, it is leaving more property on the market for local buyers, and first home buyers could be the big winners.
It comes as the Real Estate Institute of Victoria releases its statistics for the March quarter which shows Ballarat has jumped to a record median price of $411,000, just a touch below the state regional average of $419,000.
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As predicted earlier this year by some of Ballarat's leading agents, the median price - being essentially 50 per cent of metropolitan areas - and access to health care and particularly schools after strong VCE results in 2019 are seeing people flock to the city.
Areas such as Brown Hill, with its easy access to the Western Freeway have also shown strong growth recently and that is not expected to drop off anytime soon.
Partner at Jellis Craig Ballarat Matt Wiltshire said while nobody had a crystal ball to look into the future, the trend remained strong across the city.
"We have seen a downturn in the Melbourne market, seen as a risk to even drive down to Ballarat," he said.
"At the end of the day, you want to see the house, never buy it off a photo, you need to go through the full process.
"In saying that, it's definitely an opportunity for the local people to get into the market at the moment.
"We haven't yet seen prices affected, whether they will be no-one can answer the question.
The March quarter showed steady growth in a number of Ballarat's suburbs with some hitting new records
The sharpest increase came in Lucas, with the opening of the Primary School among the leading reasons for the jump. Lucas' median sales price rose from $435,000 in December to $505,000 by the end of March.
Buninyong also jumped sharply, up from $578,000 to $643,000.
Sebastopol and Wendouree remain the most affordable suburbs, both showing modest growth of just on two per cent, while Delacombe fell back slightly from a high of $381,000 to $368,000 for the quarter
Concerns of an up to 30 per cent downturn are related to the fact that there has been a sharp rise in houses left on the market for between 30 and 60 days in major centres such as Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra which have all seen a more than 100 per cent increase of long term sale figures.
In fact, Melbourne saw a 150 per cent increase of properties left on the market between February and March. In Melbourne, in February, there were 2111 properties that had spent up to two months on the market, but the end of March, that total was 5280. Smaller cities like Adelaide (41 per cent) and Perth (61 per cent) have shown less of a drop off.
Mr Wiltshire said there was no doubt that less enquiry led to longer times on market, something that Ballarat wasn't immune to.
"But the extension of the first home owners grant should assist local particularly, people can take their time a little bit and you don't have to rush into everything."
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