The wealthy are selling property as quickly as 6 months after buying as values skyrocket

• Australia’s wealthiest property owners have capitalised on Sydney’s hot property market, with recorded profits of up to $6 million on houses bought and sold within as little as 12 months.

• It comes as Domain data shows that in the past two years, house prices in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs have risen by 29%.

• Short hold periods are “a phenomenon of the rapid value increases seen in dwelling values,” Eliza Owens, CoreLogic’s head of research told Business Insider Australia.

The story of Australia’s exploding property sector has largely focused on those seeking to enter a hot market. But beyond those profiting from the sale of a longstanding home, many recent buyers have exploited the market with short holds resulting in profits of up to $6.2 million within a 12 month period.

In response to the price surge that began in January of this year, a raft of major short-hold sales presented big windfalls for some sellers.

In early June, data from CoreLogic showed that Sydney median home values were rising at a rate of $1,000 a day, a factor that pushed the average New South Wales home above the $1 million mark for the first time.

Eliza Owen, head of research at CoreLogic, told Business Insider Australia it would not be surprising to see more people cash in on recent gains across Sydney.

“CoreLogic data suggests that across Sydney, resales through the March quarter for properties with a hold period of less than two years have a median gain of $156,000,” Owen said.

This includes a median gain of over around $160,000 for sales in the City and Inner South of Sydney, and a median gain of over $300,000 across the Eastern Suburbs.

Owen said that short hold periods are “a phenomenon of the rapid value increases seen in dwelling values.”

Its data shows that values have already risen 12.5% in the calendar year to date.

Domain data shows that in the past two years, leading to March 2021, house prices in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs have risen by 29%.

One example is Seven Network commercial director Bruce McWilliam, who realestate.com.au claims owns about $200 million worth of residential and commercial property.

In February, McWilliam sold a property in Bellevue Hill for more than $9 million, quickly followed by the sale in March of a Point Piper waterfront investment property for $33 million, the highest sale of the year at the time. The property was purchased for $10.65 million in 2013.

Haynes Wileman, a real estate agent with Phillips Pantzer Donnelley in Sydney, told Business Insider Australia he has seen several short-hold properties change hands within months in the eastern suburbs with significant margins.

“We sold one home in Bronte in December last year for $2.2 million,” he said. “And we just resold it four months later for $2.46 [million].”

“Not as sexy as a million, but as a percentage that’s still over 10%” he said.

Haynes said that in most cases when owners living in a property move out, they tend to rent it out, but “with things so positive in such a short amount of time,” he’s seen several cases where they’ve instead capitalised on market conditions.