Real estate: Where you can still buy a home in a big city near the BEACH for less than $200,000

Australians can still buy a home for $200,000 in a major capital city right near a beach if they opt for an apartment instead of a house.

Some of the most affordable housing is still within a one-hour drive of a major central business district, CoreLogic data shows. 

Orelia in Perth’s outer south is the most affordable metropolitan suburb with a median unit price of just $183,522, and it’s only one suburb from Kwinana Beach, near Rockingham.

Nearby Shoalwater, right on the beach, is a bit dearer at $243,797 while neighbouring Cooloongup is $251,434.

Orelia in Perth’s outer south is the most affordable metropolitan suburb with a median unit price of just $183,522, and it’s only one suburb from Kwinana Beach, near Rockingham.

Greater Perth was home to five of Australia’s most affordable suburbs for units, with the rest being in south-east Queensland, mainly in Logan and Ipswich.

Ipswich, south-west of Brisbane, is particularly affordable with Goodna having a median unit price of $233,344.

A little closer to the Gold Coast, Logan Central has a mid-point apartment price of $235,668.

The 10 most affordable suburbs for apartments have median prices that are less than half Australia’s mid-point apartment price of $597,198 and are a tiny fraction of Bondi Beach’s typical apartment price of $1,272,175 – which follows an 18.1 per cent annual fall.

With interest rates set to continue rising in 2023, buyers of cheaper apartments are much less likely to suffer from mortgage stress where they can’t pay their bills. 

Very tight rental vacancies also mean those who buy a cheap unit to rent out would benefit from higher rental yields – where a landlord divides their annual rental income by the property price and multiplies it by 100 to get a percentage.

A little closer to the Gold Coast, Logan Central (apartment block, pictured) has a mid-point apartment price of $235,668

Orelia has Australia’s highest unit rental yield of 9.7 per cent, with a median rent of $317 a week.

The monthly rental income of $1,403 would be almost double the monthly mortgage repayments of $786 on a median-priced $183,522 unit for an investor with a 20 per cent deposit.

Perth has an ultra-tight rental vacancy rate of 0.4 per cent while in Brisbane, it’s 0.8 per cent, SQM Research data showed. 

When it comes to capital city houses, Elizabeth North in Adelaide’s north has the cheapest median price of $291,526, CoreLogic’s Best of the Best 2022 report showed.

The Kwinana town centre in Perth’s outer south also has a cheap mid-point house price of $300,252.

Australia’s 10 cheapest capital city markets for houses are in Adelaide and Perth. 

But regional areas were still the cheapest markets with Peak Hill, near Dubbo in the NSW central west, recording a median house price of $180,870.

The Albury suburb of Lavington, in southern NSW near the Victorian border, has the cheapest mid-point unit price of $251,406.

At the other end of the spectrum, Sydney’s eastern suburbs was home to Australia’s most expensive real estate for both units and houses.

Vaucluse had Australia’s most expensive median house price of $7,943,965 while nearby Point Piper had the dearest mid-point apartment price of $2,895,563.