Merbein market attractive for Mildura competition

INVESTORS in the Sunraysia housing market can attribute the region’s rise in house prices to the flow-on effects of Mildura competition.

Steep competition from Mildura has made the surrounding smaller market pools viable options for investment.

Managing director of Ray White Mildura, Damian Portaro, said that the region’s strong performance has been an expected incline.

“The region’s definitely performing well in comparison with the rest of Victoria,” he said.

“So in Mildura there’s probably 1300 to 1400 sales per year. Merbein is much smaller but appealing.

“Many areas are showing double digit growth. A lot of that is coming off more stability in the market with interest rates now appearing on the downward trend.

“The demand has always been there but now people can look at it with a lot more confidence for vendors as well to get into the market as the demand is definitely holding strong.

“We know all across Victoria demand has been holding fairly steady. It’s just been a question of the other environmental factors like interest rates stabilising and giving people the confidence to jump into the market.

“Advocates are really looking for between $300,000 and $600,000. Obviously in Mildura there are a lot of properties that fall above that, but in Merbein, a vast majority is within it.”

Even though the price jump has been a consistent event, Merbein’s 28.5 per cent annual increase is outstanding.

While the new average for Merbein is sitting at $400,000 from the past year, the market is significantly smaller than Mildura.

Between July 2024 and June 2025, Mildura reported a total of 572 sales to Merbein’s 55 sales.

The maximum prices across the region has increased with a property in Irymple selling for $1.87 million.

In Merbein, the highest sale was in October 2024 of $850,000, the next closest being a $716,000 property. The lowest sold in Merbein was for $122,000 in August of last year.

The wide range of prices in Merbein’s small pool holds strong and Mr Portaro said it’s become attractive to an equally wide range of investors.

“It was to do with post-COVID, a lot of changes,” he said.

“A lot of changes to property management and compliance and all sorts of stuff happened.

“It’s also pretty hard and pretty unaffordable to invest in the metro areas. It’s fairly spread across Australia with Melbourne being the predominant purchases. And if you’re an investor in the cities, you get minimal return these days.

“The majority seems to be getting better returns between 5 per cent and 6 per cent yield has been attractive for investors. What started slowly has built up.”