Mortgage Brokers Across Lake Macquarie

Buying in Lake Macquarie

The lake shapes the market here more than anything else. Waterfront and near-water suburbs price very differently from those a few streets back, and the difference between the western shore and the coastal strip is larger than most buyers expect before they start looking.

The numbers put a figure on that. Toronto publishes the lowest house median of the twenty at $825,250 and Redhead the highest at $1,885,000, and sixteen of the twenty are at or above $1,000,000 — a higher proportion than Newcastle. Lake Macquarie is not the cheaper alternative to the city that it is often taken for.

Redhead is the clearest illustration of what the coast does to a market. It has the dearest houses in the area at $1,885,000 and the cheapest units at $530,000, a gap of $1,355,000 in one suburb. Four of the twenty — Blacksmiths, Cardiff Heights, Wangi Wangi and West Wallsend — publish no unit median at all, because too little sells to support one. Glendale sits at the other end, with houses and units only $55,000 apart.

House rents run from $650 a week at Carey Bay to $885 at Redhead. That is a narrower band than Newcastle’s, which is worth noting if you are buying to rent out rather than to live in: the sale prices here vary far more than the rents do.