In spite of Sydney’s recent boom, property markets in the central western New South Wales region of Orana have performed better than its big brothers in metropolitan Sydney.

Propertyology recently completed a three month study to compare the historical property market performance of each of Australia’s 550 local government authorities between 2000 and 2014. Given that some property markets have higher rates of growth and others have higher rental yields, Propertyology calculated the ‘total return’ (average annual growth rate plus rental yield) and we then ranked the LGA’s from 1 to 550 based on this performance.

Four of the LGA’s from the Orana region featured in Australia’s Top 40% for property market performance over the last fifteen years. None of the forty-three LGA’s from Greater-Sydney claimed such status.

Cobar was the region’s best performed property market, ranked a very impressive 15th out of 550 LGA’s in Australia. The median house value of $227,500 as at December 2014 has increased by an average of 10% per annum from $45,000 at the state of 2000. Average rental yields as at December 2014 were 6.8%. Cobar’s economy is heavily influenced by mining, specifically the diverse range of metals such as gold, copper, zinc, silver and lead. The average age of 35 is below the 37 national average. It’s a worker’s town and the $1,259 per week average household income is better than the $1,234 national average, and housing is significantly more affordable than big cities.

The LGA of Wellington produced an equally impressive result, ranking 30th overall. Narromine (154th) and Dubbo (217th) also featured in the best 40% of Australian property markets over the fifteen year period 2000 to 2014.

The Orana region covers more than one quarter of NSW’s total land mass. Fertile soils, plentiful water supply, and natural resources are in the region’s economic DNA of agriculture, mining, and tourism.

With quality infrastructure including tertiary education campuses, high class health facilities, and a large retail sector, Dubbo is the primary service centre for the 120,000 population region. For the price of a typical house in Greater-Sydney one could today buy three houses in Dubbo where the median house price grew from $115,000 to $312,130 over the last fifteen years and the average rental yield was 5.7%.

Dubbo also won the battle of regional rivalry with Orange, which ranked 351st (amongst Australia’s middle 20%). Greater-Sydney’s best performing LGA over the last fifteen years was Blacktown, ranked 276th.

This article was written by Simon Pressley, Managing Director of Propertyology.