Development Insights

What this tool shows

Development Insights answers the first question in any small development feasibility: what does the finished product actually sell for in this area? It groups recent unit sales by council and by suburb, and splits them into the layouts that matter for a back-yard or small multi-unit project — two bedrooms with one bathroom, two bedrooms with two bathrooms, and three bedrooms with one bathroom.

Pick a council for a broad view, or switch to suburbs when you want the comparison tight. Every table shows how many sales sit behind each figure, so you can tell a well-supported median from a thin one at a glance.

How to read the table

Median is the middle sold price of the group: half of the sales were below it and half above. The middle half shows the range covered by the central fifty per cent of sales, which is a better sense of the normal spread than the cheapest and dearest outliers.

The brick and weatherboard columns repeat the median for units in each wall type, and the new / near-new and established / older columns do the same for building age. When a group has fewer than three sales we show only the count, because a single sale says more about that one property than about the market.

Where the numbers come from

Public figures use sold prices published on realestate.com.au. Wall cladding, building age and the other features are read from the listing photos by an AI review and then grouped; they are estimates, and the share of sales already reviewed is shown under each table. Coverage grows every day as more photos are processed.

Land sizes come from Vicmap property boundaries where available. For units on a shared block we do not treat the whole block as the unit's own land.

Why the percentage effects differ from the raw medians

A raw median mixes everything together. Older brick units are common in established, expensive suburbs, and newer units are common in growth areas, so comparing medians alone can make age or cladding look more or less important than it really is.

The percentage effects come from a statistical model across metro Melbourne that holds the suburb, the month of sale, bedrooms, bathrooms, car spaces, land and building size steady, and then estimates what the wall type or the age adds or takes away on its own. Each effect is shown with a range; when that range runs from below zero to above zero, the difference is not clear in the data.

Using it in a development feasibility

For a back-yard unit or a small subdivision, the useful comparison is a new or near-new single-level unit of the layout you plan to build, sold in the same council over the last year. Start with the council view, then check the suburb view to see whether your street's pocket sits above or below the council figure.

Treat the figures as a starting point, not a valuation. Look at the number of sales, read the individual sales where you have access, and confirm the end value with a local agent or a licensed valuer before you commit to a purchase price.

Common questions

Why do some cells show only a count? A median needs at least three sales. With one or two sales the figure would mostly reflect those particular properties, so we show how many there were and leave the price out.

How often is it updated? New sales are collected every night and the photo review runs continuously, so the medians and the share of reviewed sales move a little every day.

Which properties are included? Units and villas, including units on a shared block. Apartments are left out because their prices follow a different market, and townhouses are not collected because most are double-storey and not comparable to a single-level back unit.

How is this different from government median prices? Official medians cover all sales in a suburb over a long period. This tool narrows the comparison to the layout and age you are actually planning to build, using recent sales.

Is the sample big enough?

As a rule of thumb, a median backed by a few dozen sales over the last year is a solid guide, a handful of sales is a hint, and a single digit in the brick or weatherboard column is only a prompt to look closer. If the suburb view is thin, step back to the council view, or widen the time window to two years, and compare the two.

Sales also cluster: one new estate or one large block of units can dominate a suburb's figures for a while. Where you have access to the sale-by-sale list, open the group and check that the sales are spread across different streets and builders before relying on the number.

Rooming houses

The rooming house section covers properties registered as rooming houses or advertised with rooms let individually, in Victoria and Queensland. Sales are grouped by the number of rooms taken from the sale and rental ads, with wall type, year built and gross yield where the rent and the sale are close enough in time to compare. Because these records come from licensed property data, this section is only available to signed-in accounts on our team list.