This St Marys home recently sold for $2m. The area was once one of Sydney’s cheapest but values have soared recently.
They’re suburbs where you’ll wish you bought a home over the past year – the Sydney areas with the steepest value growth that gifted homeowners rapid equity and had aspiring buyers lamenting missed chances.
Exclusive PropTrack valuation data has revealed multiple areas where property values rose by more than 15 per cent, adding an average of over $200,000 to the estimated worth of houses, in some cases.
This was well above the circa 7 per cent rise in values across the Greater Sydney market as a whole.
Most of these areas were traditional battler suburbs in Sydney’s outer regions, where property prices had been lower than the Harbour City norm and offered new buyers better bang for their buck.
They were also some of the most popular suburbs for investors and first-home buyers – the two buyer categories who emerged as one of the dominant market forces over the second half of the year.
Sydney’s top annual growth area was Miller, a suburb near Liverpool, where unit values rose by an average of 34 per cent, or about $192,000.
With a then median unit price of $563,000, it had been one of the city’s most affordable suburbs at the start of 2025, but apartments are now worth an average of $755,000.
Other suburbs where growth was similar were concentrated in the Mount Druitt and St Marys region of Western Sydney – an area once referred to as “Struggle Street”.
These suburbs included Whalan, Tregear, St Clair, Shalvey, Blackett, Colyton, Hebersham, St Marys and North St Marys, according to the PropTrack automated valuation data.
Part of the surge in these areas was investor-driven, with infrastructure planned to link up St Marys with the coming Western Sydney airport driving substantial investor demand.
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REA Group economist Anne Flaherty said affordability was the pivotal factor driving which suburbs outperformed.
The expectation from investors is that the new infrastructure, which will turn the area into a vital Western Sydney hub, will drive up local rents and home values.
“The investors have more money and they can usually outbid the first-home buyers,” said local agent Amber Boumelhem of Ray White United Group.
“A lot of the first-home buyers are coming here because this is what they can afford. Sydney prices are crazy.”
REA Group economist Anne Flaherty said investors were going toe to toe with first-home buyers who, since October, have been supported by the expanded First Home Guarantee Scheme.
The scheme allows eligible buyers to purchase properties with deposits as low as 5 per cent without needing to pay pricey lender’s mortgage insurance.
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Buyer demand shot up following rate cuts and expanded first-home buyer support. Picture: David Crosling
Many of the properties cheap enough to fall within the price caps for the first-home buyer support were the same areas getting popular with investors, Ms Flaherty explained.
“Investors have been coming back into the market looking for long-term growth. It’s quite clear that we have a housing shortage that will take a while to correct,” she said.
“Investors are seeing that population growth is strong and we are not building enough, plus there have been interest rate cuts, so there has been an expectation of long-term (value) growth.”
Other strong growth markets were the western and non-coastal suburbs of the Sutherland Shire, with the relative affordability again driving huge buyer demand.
This included in Heathcote (houses), Sylvania (units) and Menai (units), where values rose by nearly 20 per cent annually.
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Justin Riddett, with kids Gerace, Tom, George and Flynn, who have put their home up for sale where the local market is picking up. Picture: Tim Hunter
There were also parts of the northern beaches where values rose by more than 10 per cent, including Freshwater (units) and Mona Vale (houses).
Mona Vale resident Justin Riddet is selling his home on Hillcrest Ave while seeking out his next property and said it seemed other buyers were willing to spend big if the right property came along.
“Not much is getting listed around here and so when there is a good one up for sale it seems to get a lot of attention … the prices in this area have changed massively since we moved here a few years ago.”
Mr Riddet, who has listed his home with Ray White Mona Vale agent Emma Blake, said he expected the house hunt to be challenging because so few people were listing their homes.
Ms Flaherty said many of the top growth markets of 2025 were unlikely to outperform in 2026 as buyer demand could tapper off as prices continue to rise.
Instead, buyers were likely to gravitate to new suburbs where they believed they could get better value, with the suburbs getting attention because of affordability continually shifting, she explained.
“It’s complex,” she said. “Price growth can continue in very competitive markets because buyers who have been outbid or see very stiff competition are more likely to stretch budgets and offer more than they would have originally planned.
“But you can get markets reaching a huge level where they are no longer as affordable any more. They jump up $200,000 in a year and as they become less affordable, there are less buyers.”
She added that the First Home Guarantee Scheme would continue to drive demand over 2026 and suburbs below the price caps in each state would perform well.
Ms Blake said the market for “family homes” was a little softer than normal as buyers awaited more direction on interest rates, but high-end and luxury properties were selling strongly. Many of these buyers were not affected by rate movements and were buying properties quickly because of volatility in the stockmarket.
“The prestige market is going off, people are just getting on with it,” she said.
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