Across much of regional Australia, real estate agents are once again having difficult conversations with vendors about price expectations. But in Mildura, at the far north-west edge of Victoria, the market is running hotter than eve, and according to one of the area’s leading agents, it is leaving even the COVID-era boom in the shade.
“It’s phenomenal — actually greater than COVID,” says Damian Portaro, managing director of Ray White Mildura, director of Ray White Albury North and a regional director of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria.
“Back then demand was uniform across the whole market. Now it’s concentrated, frenzied and investor-led.”
Damian has worked through plenty of market cycles, but the current wave has caught even him by surprise.
“The only thing different between this and COVID is where COVID was spread essentially across the entire market, anything from affordable units up to blue-chip multimillion-dollar properties, it was very uniform.”
“This time it’s very, very segmented between $300,000 and $630,000. And it’s complete bedlam in that price range. Far, far faster-paced than COVID.”
He describes selling in this bracket as “days on market — literally days”.
Many homes receive between five and 30 offers, frequently from buyers who have not even set foot in the property.
Above about $650,000 the frenzy evaporates and Mildura returns to a more balanced market, with homes taking 15 to 30 days to sell.
But in that mid-priced band, the phones do not stop ringing.
What has created such intensity is a combination of affordability and yield.
“It’s investors,” Damian says. “Investors have come into our market in a huge way.
Mildura has made a lot of the growth charts, the investor books, and now we’re on the radar.
“About a year ago we saw our first-ever buyer’s agent enter the market. I’d probably sold more than a thousand homes and only ever dealt with one or two buyers’ agents before. Now I’d say 80 per cent of those investors are using one.”
For many, the numbers are hard to ignore. Rental returns of between 5.5 and six per cent are common, vacancy rates have hovered below one per cent for years – currently about 0.78 per cent – and demand from tenants is immediate.
During the pandemic Victoria froze rent increases, suppressing yields for a time.
“Then, of course, once they undid that, rents started to explode,” Damian says.
“Investors are capitalising. They’re coming back in; cities are unaffordable and the returns aren’t there, so a lot of these investors and buyers’ agents are now focusing on regional areas. And Mildura happens to be… I won’t say the epicentre, but it’s crazy.”
Mildura’s appeal, he argues, is broader than many outsiders realise.
“People think we just grow oranges,” he says.
“But we’re strong and diverse economically. We’re an hour’s flight to Melbourne, an hour and a half to Sydney, four and a half hours’ drive to Adelaide. We’re isolated in a way, but we have good access. It’s an interesting mix — affordable but connected.”
The way property is sold has also shifted. Off-market deals, once rare in Mildura, are now routine and Damian often launches a listing first on his personal social media before it hits the portals.
“I’ll do a sneak peek or a prelaunch on social media and I start getting offers site unseen. These are all site unseen, by the way,” he says.
“Sometimes the post has been up an hour or two and I’m already getting offers. By the time it hits online there’s a stack of interest.”
Open homes tell a different story. Unlike during COVID, when crowds of 20 or more groups might attend, today’s inspections are modest – often just three to five groups.
But behind the scenes, enquiry volume is extraordinary, driven largely by out-of-town investors working through buyers’ agents.
The unexpected boom has created growing pains.
“It hasn’t come without problems. You get stress fractures because of the sheer demand. We’ve had to put staff on immediately to help and keep service levels high.”
In the past few weeks he has hired two new team members locally and added another offshore property management specialist, with further sales associates on the way.
The next 12 to 18 months, he believes, will depend on policy and interest rates.
Changes to the first home buyers grant, including a five per cent deposit option, are likely to feed more buyers into the mid-range.
“If we get another rate cut this year and the new first home owners grant kicks in, that will spur it along further,” he says.
“That could keep this going another 12 months. If we don’t get both of those, it might slow earlier and just head back to normal.”
For now, though, Mildura remains an anomaly in a cooling regional landscape: a tightly defined pocket where investor appetite, strong yields and new buying models have created a storm few predicted.
“When you list a property in that $300,000 to $630,000 price range and it’s competitive, it’s bananas. Absolutely bananas.”
