Narrandera led the charge with a 53 per cent increase in property sales and a 90 per cent increase in property value in the last year.

Meanwhile, only four capital city suburbs ranked among the top 50 Australian council areas for housing growth, highlighting the increasing popularity of regional living. 

Director of PRDnationwide Simon Freemantle said that Wagga is “thrashing” a lot of other markets, including Sydney, in terms of growth. 

“You’ll find the Wagga market is outdoing a lot of other markets, and it’s going to continue to expand over the next couple of years,” he said.

“We have a few people working for us who came from Sydney and they love it here, it's affordable, you get more bang for your buck and there’s much less pressures. 

“Narrandera may have had a new development, which sold out in that time frame, it’s hard to tell – but you often get massive spikes with new buildings.”

He said he strongly believes the Wagga housing market will continue to overtake Sydney in growth.

“A lot of people only live in a main city because they have to from work, and once that’s removed from the equation you find a lot of people disperse to places like Wagga,” he said.

Of the 50 council areas to rank the highest for growth in house value and sales, 31 of those areas were in NSW.

There were 301,776 city properties and 166,217 regional properties sold.