Three Australian suburbs named among the world’s coolest

The world’s coolest suburbs have now been named by online magazine Time Out.

Voted by their readers, the magazine has stated that these suburbs are simply the places you want to be right now.

There are only three Australian suburbs that have made the list – Fitzroy in Melbourne’s inner north, Marrickville in Sydney’s inner west, and Fortitude Valley in inner Brisbane.

While there is no doubt these are very cool neighbourhoods when you measure them as places to eat out, enjoy the nightlife and people watch, does it mean that property in these locations will outperform the rest of the market?

In fact, with all top suburb surveys including most cool, hottest and most livable, does it translate to pricing? 

Fitzroy isn’t just a cool suburb, Gertrude Street in the suburb was also bestowed with the honour of being named Time Out’s second coolest street in the world.

The suburb is relatively expensive with a median price of $1.54 million but certainly is eclipsed by more prestigious suburbs in Melbourne such as Toorak ($5.5 million) and Brighton ($3.5 million).

Prices in Fitzroy have increased by 6.2 per cent over the past 12 months, outperforming Melbourne’s median growth of 3.5 per cent but below the top performers where many suburbs have seen well over 10 per cent growth.

While pricing has outperformed, rental growth hasn’t, staying flat over the past 12 months compared to Melbourne as a whole which increased by 11.6 per cent.

Overall, Fitzroy is a solid performer but certainly not a top performer when it comes to pricing. 

Marrickville has at various times been described as the “new Newtown” and the “new Paddington” which reflects the growing popularity of this suburb.

The suburb, however, has been named as being cooler than both Paddington and Newtown and in terms of pricing sits in the middle of both suburbs.

With a $1.96 million median, it is cheaper than Paddington ($3.2 million) but more expensive than Newtown ($1.78 million).

Over the past 12 months, the median for Marrickville has increased by 26.5 per cent, much stronger than Sydney’s decline of 1.9 per cent.

Rents haven’t risen quite as fast as Sydney however, up 10 per cent (Sydney’s rents are up 13.3 per cent). Like Fitzroy, Marrickville is a solid performer but certainly not a top performer. 

Fortitude Valley (or The Valley as it is known in Brisbane) has changed enormously over the past decade. It has always been a very popular destination for its nightlife but now contains lots of cool hotels, restaurants and shopping precincts.

Fortitude Valley hardly contains any houses but has had a lot of apartment development. The median is very affordable, sitting at just $435,000, less than the median unit price for Brisbane at $470,000.

It has also had lower price growth, increasing at just 6.1 per cent over the past 12 months compared to Brisbane at 10 per cent.

Rents have increased by 7.1 per cent compared to Brisbane units at 12 per cent. High development in the area has kept Fortitude Valley cool and affordable. 

While coolness kind of pays off, what about liveability?

In 2021, Adelaide was named Australia’s most liveable city and the third most liveable city in the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit.

While it is hard to make a direct connection between this announcement and the performance of Adelaide, there is no doubt that Adelaide has been a top performer this year.

At a time when price growth stumbled in much of the rest of the Australia, Adelaide has had one of its strongest years on record, only now starting to see prices coming back a little bit.

Not surprisingly, while we love to visit cool suburbs, buyers and renters flock to liveability.