Australian homeowners record $36.6 billion in resale profits as NSW suburbs dominate, Cotality finds

Australian homeowners who sold properties in the three months to June recorded a record combined profit of $36.6 billion, with New South Wales accounting for six of the top 10 local government areas for median gains, according to Cotality’s Pain and Gain report for the June quarter.

Cotality analysed about 97,000 resale transactions and found nearly 95 percent of those sales turned a profit. The strongest median gains were seen in coastal and prestige Sydney suburbs. Kiama on the NSW South Coast topped the list with a median profit of $758,000 for vendors who held properties for almost 12 years on average, a period during which the median dwelling value in Kiama rose about 120 percent. Woollahra Council in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, which includes Bellevue Hill, Double Bay and Vaucluse, recorded a median gain of $575,000.

Regional Australia continued to outperform capital cities on several measures. Cotality reported 62 markets — led by regional South Australia — delivered a 100 percent rate of profit-making sales over a five-year window; just nine capital city local government areas matched that level, six of them in Adelaide. Among capital cities, Brisbane led with a near-perfect 99.7 percent profit-making rate and the highest median resale gain of $400,000. Adelaide recorded a 99.1 percent profit rate, and Perth was at 98 percent.

Loss-making sales were concentrated in particular markets and property types. Darwin had the highest rate of loss-making transactions at 20.6 percent, followed by Melbourne at 10.6 percent, Sydney at 7.7 percent, Hobart at 7.2 percent and the ACT at 6.7 percent. The local government areas with the lowest median profits were Longreach in regional Queensland, at $45,200, and Coolgardie in Western Australia, at $52,500.

Cotality’s head of research, Eliza Owen, said the median gain from profit-making resales reached a record $315,000 in the June quarter, up from $305,000 in the March quarter and well above the decade average of $250,000. She said the national median loss fell to $42,000, down from a high of $45,000 in the December quarter of 2024, though 5.2 percent of sellers still incurred losses.

"Many of these losses are concentrated in markets that still haven't returned to their peak values," Owen said, noting that the top 10 markets for loss-making resales accounted for a third of all losses in the quarter, compared with one-quarter over the decade average. She added that some owners may be choosing to sell after long holding periods as conditions improve, effectively cutting their losses.

Cotality found nearly 60 percent of the uptick in loss-making sales came from unit resales in Sydney and Melbourne, amounting to about 2,500 loss-making transactions. Despite the increase in the aggregate value of gains, the combined loss for sellers deepened to $292 million in the quarter.

Housing affordability pressures remain pronounced, according to Domain’s chief of research and economics, Nicola Powell. Powell said the time required to save for a home deposit has increased to more than eight years, up from about six years in the early 2000s, and that mortgage repayments now consume roughly 54 percent of household income — a 20-year high.

Powell also pointed to long-term shifts in homeownership rates. She said that among people born between 1947 and 1951, more than 68 percent owned a home by ages 30–34; for today’s cohort, ownership at the same age is about 50 percent nationally and around 45 percent in New South Wales.

The June-quarter figures underscore a diverging market: substantial capital appreciation in many regional and prestige coastal markets alongside pockets of long-running weakness where values have not yet recovered to previous peaks. Cotality’s dataset highlights the geographic concentration of both outsized gains and persistent losses, and the results come as affordability metrics and high mortgage-service burdens continue to shape buying and selling decisions across Australia.