Glossary · Australian property
Median price.
The middle value in a sorted list of property sale prices in a suburb over a defined period (typically 12 months). Less skewed by outliers than mean (average), preferred for property comparisons.
If 11 properties sell in a suburb sorted from lowest to highest, the median is the 6th sale. The mean (average) would skew higher if a single $5M outlier sale lands in a $700K-typical suburb. The median absorbs that without distortion. ABS, state land records, and most published market reports default to median for this reason.
Two gotchas. First, median moves with mix not just market: if higher-end stock sells in a quarter the median rises even if individual property values didn't. Second, low-volume periods (under ~30 sales/year for a SAL) make median noisy. Small mix shifts produce large apparent moves. ABS publishes only when a SAL has enough volume. Thinner markets need 24-36 months of sales to converge on a stable estimate.
Pap-context: every suburb scorecard surfaces median by property type (house vs unit), median by bedroom count where data permits, and a thin-market gate that suppresses the headline median when sample size is insufficient.
Worked example
Suburb sales last 12 months: 5 houses at $720K, $750K, $780K, $810K, $1.2M. Median = $780K (the middle, 3rd of 5). Mean = $852K (skewed up by the $1.2M outlier). The median better represents what a typical buyer paid.
Source
ABS Residential Property Price Indexes methodology; state land-record median tables.
Related terms
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