An insulated Wagga housing market appears to have gotten through the first half of the year unharmed by coronavirus.
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A Domain house price report for June 2020 has found median prices rose by 9.6 per cent over the past 12 months in Wagga, while metropolitan Sydney saw a decline.
For PRD real estate agent Mark Kennedy, these figures did not come as a surprise.
Mr Kennedy said the city had an "exceptionally healthy" market that had always stayed strong through times of global financial distress.
"When we have downturns in the marketplace in your capital cities, Wagga's been immune to it," he said.
"For the prices to remain stable or to increase in that region just shows the healthy state the Wagga market is in."
Mr Kennedy said an increase of 9.6 per cent was a little above what Wagga would typically see, and he was seeing more interest in moving to the city than normal which could see house prices remain on the up.
"I would think at the present time, the way things are panning out currently, that could be quite sustainable," he said.
"The Domain figures and the figures I have are showing a lot of interest from people from particularly the Sydney area," he said.
He said he had also been surprised by a "dramatic" recent increase in demand for vacant land, with the government's HomeBuilder grants strengthening the enthusiasm of buyers wanting space to build on.
"That is the big thing at the moment, the appetite for people buying vacant land," he said.
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Hore and Davies director John Bittar said the continued rise in house prices was a reflection of the high demand in the region.
"We've experienced enormously strong enquiries from buyers, the issue we are facing as agents currently is we just don't have enough stock to satisfy demand," he said.
"Generally when you've got a lot of demand ... it has to have an effect on price."
Mr Bittar said the increase in house prices was "refreshing" news in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, and Wagga was lucky to have not seen a strong direct impact of the virus.
"We're very fortunate living in Wagga, in a regional area ... we haven't had any new cases for several months and we're getting a lot of people that are maybe even more so looking at a potential tree change, to get out of major CBD hubs for a bunch of different reasons," he said.
Mr Bittar said while the city had not been immune from the widespread loss of employment due to the virus, his company had barely seen a slow period throughout lockdown with plenty of people both locally and from other areas active in the market.
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