Changing the name of a suburb can make the locals feel good about where they live, but can it change property prices?

The perennial question to rename a part of Highton to Queens Park to reflect its widely-recognised locality has bubbled up again when Geelong councillors Eddy and Stretch Kontelj co-signed a letter to Victorian planning minister Sonya Kilkenny requesting her support for Geelong council to commence public consultation on the locally-popular proposal.

It’s not the first suburb to change, with Whittington name dropped south of Townsend Rd in favour of St Albans Park as residential development progressed in the 1990s, Collendina disappearing at Ocean Grove, Newtown swallowing up working class Chilwell, and Rippleside expanded the end a bayside anomaly for North Geelong.

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Geelong buyers advocate Tony Slack said changing the name to Queens Park would result in higher house prices, but it won’t happen overnight.
“It makes them a little bit more exclusive,” Mr Slack said.

“I couldn’t see it happening overnight but in the short to medium term perhaps.

Mr Slack, who was a real estate agent for 36 years, said people sought homes in that pocket for the riverside position and quality of the houses.

“Before realestate.com.au, we would be advertising in the Geelong Advertiser and would be referring to Highton/Queens Park – we always wanted to differentiate that part of Highton.”

Highton’s median house price of $875,000 is among the 10 most expensive in Geelong, according to PropTrack.

But analysis of Cotality sales data for houses shows higher property values in the Queens Park pocket, with a $1.1m median house price.

Queens Park stretches from the single-lane Queens Park Bridge connecting Newtown to the Montpellier Service Basins straddling Scenic Rd.

Prices have held up better in Queens Park, with a 3.6 per cent rise over 12 months, compared to an overall 4.8 per cent decline across Highton.

Though capital growth is level pegging at 25 per cent over five years, a $222,000 gain was recorded since 2020 in the Queens Park pocket, compared to $175,000 across the entire suburb.

Barry Plant Geelong agent Kieron Hunter said changing the name would underline the exclusivity of the area, which has about 600 homes.

“It’s a little bit in some ways like Manifold Heights. Obviously, a really small pocket, probably one of the smaller suburbs for mine and it gets that exclusivity.”

Manifold Heights has recently topped the city’s house prices, reaching $1.23m to overtake Newtown at $1.1m.

Whitford agent Heidi Trempel said it was the reverse when Chilwell was renamed Newtown to shake off the working class heritage.

Chilwell’s old workers’ cottages sat at the bottom of the hill, while the expensive homes were at the top in Newtown.

“The gap is closing because anywhere where there’s cafes and development, like from a cafe shopping strip, that’s really good for that little pocket,” Ms Trempel said.

“The younger ones, who potentially come from outside of Geelong, love the Chilwell zone.”

And five bayside streets of North Geelong also increased in buyers’ estimation, Ms Trempel said, when the area, widely known locally as St Helens but lined with many timber workers cottages, was renamed Rippleside.

“I grew up knowing it as North Geelong and St Helens and all of the sudden it turned into Rippleside and everyone from Melbourne thought, ‘oh, Rippleside’,” she said.

“There’s a real mixture of properties in that little pocket and I do think Rippleside gives it that bayside feel and that’s why people who want to be bayside love that Rippleside name.”

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Massachusetts homebuyers will soon be protected from being pressured into waiving home inspections under new regulation.

The policy, put forth by the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC), prohibits sellers and their agents from requiring or encouraging buyers to waive a home inspection as a condition of purchasing real estate.

It also prevents sellers from accepting offers if they are informed in advance that the buyer intends to forgo an inspection. The regulation takes effect for home sales that close after Oct. 15.

Buyers retain the right to decline an inspection, but only if the decision is made independently of any seller influence. Sellers will also be required to provide a written disclosure affirming the buyer’s right to an inspection.

“A home inspection is an important step in buying a property. Homebuyers must have the ability to make informed financial decisions and be given a clear picture of needed repairs or safety issues that could arise,” said Ed Augustus, secretary of the EOHLC.

“This new regulation creates a fairer, more even playing field for buyers and sellers, and HLC is proud to implement yet another smart policy from the historic Affordable Homes Act.”

Massachusetts‘ broader Affordable Homes Act, signed into law by Gov. Maura Healey, includes multiple initiatives aimed at increasing affordability across the state.

Public consideration for ending home inspection waivers in the state first began in late 2023.

Rule modification, industry pushback

The home inspection regulation was developed after a public comment period in May, during which EOHLC received more than 100 submissions.

Several provisions were revised based on stakeholder feedback — including a delayed implementation date to give the real estate industry time to prepare updated forms, training and educational materials.

The rule clarifies that while buyers can still opt out of inspections, sellers cannot suggest or require this waiver. Contract terms that undermine inspection effectiveness are also banned, although negotiated limits — such as repair cost thresholds or return of deposit — remain permissible.

A standard disclosure form will be issued by EOHLC. Failure to provide it constitutes a violation of state consumer protection law for any party acting in a business context. Other forms of noncompliance will be addressed based on the nature of the violation.

To support housing development, the rule exempts certain pre-sales of new construction, provided contracts are signed before substantial completion and the seller offers at least a one-year express warranty.

Additional exemptions apply to domestic partners, extended family members and certain estate planning arrangements.

Opponents of the policy include the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, Massachusetts Association of Realtors, Massachusetts Mortgage Bankers Association and the Commercial Real Estate Development Association.

In a joint statement, these entities argued that the legislation contains overly broad and ambiguous liability language. Concerns were also raised about whether the state has sufficient inspection capacity to handle a likely surge in demand.

Affordable housing progress

Earlier this month, Healey’s office announced $7.4 million in funding for two office-to-residential conversion projects that are expected to create nearly 200 housing units in downtown Boston. The state also finalized the sale of 450 acres of surplus land to support development of up to 3,500 new homes.

The administration has also reported significant progress on its housing agenda — including zoning reforms, new investment programs and the statewide adoption of accessory dwelling units (ADUs).

A total of 134 communities served by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) have approved multifamily zoning, with nearly 4,200 new units reportedly in the development pipeline.

EOHLC is expected to continue public outreach and education efforts in advance of the inspection policy’s implementation date.

The story for the housing market over the past three years has been, “Home sales are down, home prices are up.”

Because inventory was so restricted after the pandemic, prices pushed higher even as demand weakened. That story may finally be inverting as unsold inventory of homes is now great enough that home prices are below last year’s levels in many parts of the country.

We’re almost halfway through 2025, and mortgage rates have stayed higher for longer than anyone expected. Home sales have continued to disappoint through the peak buying season and are only now just showing some growth over last year. So even as price pressures emerge, home sales volumes are starting to show growth over 2024.

Available inventory of homes on the market is back to the pre-pandemic range, with 826,000 single-family homes unsold on the market as of mid-June. That’s 32% more than this time last year. It took three full years, but the supply of unsold homes has finally built sufficiently to put downward pressure on prices. Demand remains very slow, so this trend looks unlikely to change any time soon.

Meanwhile, because of pandemic-led tight inventory, home prices climbed in 2022, finishing the year up 6% over 2021. The calendar year 2023 started off very weak, but home prices finished up 5%. Last year, surprisingly — after a third year of mortgage rates in the 6s and 7s — home prices climbed 4% again. Even as inventory grew, there were sufficient buyers to buoy prices just a bit.

But this year that trend has finally petered out. As of mid-June 2025, home prices (as measured by the Altos weekly pending home sales median price, 90-day moving average) are up nationally just 0.55% versus summer 2024. Depending on how you measure “prices,” it’s safe to categorize home prices for 2025 as the softest in many years.

As of June 6, 2025, we measure 11 states with home prices at or below their 2024 levels:

• Hawaii: -3.8%
• Iowa: -2.0%
• Arizona: -1.6%
• Georgia: -1.3%
• Florida: -1.2%
• Texas: -1.2%
• Colorado: -0.8%
• Alabama: -0.2%
• Montana: 0.0%
• New York: 0.0%
• South Carolina: 0.0%

I discussed this the other day on the HousingWire Daily podcast. Most of the price weakness is across the Sun Belt, where inventory has built the most and fewer buyers are moving from the north. It seems likely that Tennessee, Utah, and Washington are next in line.

The sales data headlines you’ll see right now are covering April data, and they look rough. Zillow reported that 27 of 50 states had seasonally adjusted home price declines from March to April.

The momentum in home prices sure seems to be slowing. A word of caution with the current headlines: April was really nasty across all financial markets. With the chaos of tariffs, the stock markets tanked, mortgage rates spiked, and consumers and businesses pulled back on spending across the board.

Many home sales got delayed, and home prices suffered. We’ll soon start to see the headline housing announcements reflect May, and in the real-time Altos data, May started out slowly but ended with year-over-year gains. Meanwhile, May was a huge recovery month for the stock market as well. It’d be wise not to use April as a proxy for the whole year.

Indeed, there are slight nuances of home pricing stickiness as financial markets recovered in May and June. The Altos median asking price is 1.3% ahead of 2024, and the price of all the homes under contract is 2.5% above 2024.

Meanwhile, the percentage of homes on the market with price reductions is at a 15-year high for June — 39.5%. Nearly 40% of homes on the market have taken a price reduction from the original list price. That’s significantly more than “normal,” which would be closer to 30%. There’s no indication that demand is going to push prices higher this year. Will the market crash?

The vibes are changing

I run an unscientific poll of my followers on Twitter and LinkedIn each month asking where they think home prices are heading for the year. While nationally home prices are still positive compared to the same point in 2024, the vibes for home prices are growing much more bearish. As of my June 12 poll, over 62% of respondents now expect home prices to fall in 2025. That’s up from just 27% in January.

The vibes-casters aren’t the only ones getting more pessimistic. I participate in a panel of economists who forecast home prices each quarter for Fannie Mae and Pulsenomics. This group is still positive, projecting on average 2.95% home price gains for the year. But they’re slowly growing less sanguine. The forecaster average was 3.41% last quarter and 5.25% to start the year.

Why are the economists slightly more optimistic than consumers? It’s very unusual for home prices to decline in any given calendar year compared to the previous one. Outside of the Great Financial Crisis, annually, home prices — as measured by the Case-Shiller Index — have fallen only once (1990). One reason is the phenomenon known as “downside-stickiness.” Existing homeowners don’t like to price their homes for less than they were once worth.

In many cases, homeowners prefer to hold and not sell rather than suffer a perceived loss on the price. This is especially true if the homeowner has a lot of equity and very cheap holding costs — and almost everyone in the country has a very cheap mortgage now.

For the rest of 2025, we can see that inventory levels — especially in the Sun Belt — are now sufficient to put downward pressure on home prices. This seems likely to continue and spread to more states. However, there isn’t much in the data that shows significant price declines.

With a little luck in the second half of the year, mortgage rates ease down, which spurs buyer demand a bit. In that case, we expect to finish 2025 with slight gains in home prices over 2024.

Rose and David Ung’s family thought they were “crazy” for selling their house and moving into a unit with two young kids and a dog.

“We have always lived in houses when we were growing up with family, then when we got married we bought an apartment, when we had kids we thought we needed more space so we had everything that comes with a suburban house and block” Ms Ung said. “But It just wasn’t the same.”

The couple then decided to switch the narrative and move their young family and dog into an apartment.

“We love being in an apartment,” Ms Ung said. “Once our family saw what we had, they understood.”

“The community aspect, shops, convenience of things… I’ve connected with the community and local cafe, built connections and I’m a magician so we’ve worked together to put on community events,” Mr Ung added.

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For Ms Ung the safety aspect was one of the biggest benefits.

“There’s CCTV and plenty of people around, Rhodes is a really safe area and the access to public transport as well.”

A big draw card for them was also the facilities for their kids.

“We have seen an up-tick in our own kids’ self confidence,” Ms Ung said. “Since we moved here, we’ve made friends that live around the area and our kids play with their friends in the park, there’s a real sense of community,” Ms Ung said.

On top of the pet-friendly park for their dog, they had access to plenty of family friendly and entertainment facilities including an expansive swimming pool with private cabana’s, a children’s splash pad, poolside grille, table tennis, cinema and games room.

There was also a library and work-from-home spaces for residents wanting to work or study outside of their apartment but still within the complex.

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“When you’re in a house you tend to stay in your house and you only know your neighbours to the left and right,” she said.

“Our weekends look a lot different now, we can hang out as a family instead of me mowing the lawn for half a day,” Mr Ung added.

The couple did consider looking at houses in Rhodes but found they would lose out on plenty of the benefits of apartment living for a premium price.

“There is such a big (price) difference between the houses, a couple million dollar difference … we have a three bed apartment and study, so it’s quite generous and works for our family, there wasn’t a benefit then forking out a couple extra million,” Ms Ung said.

Billbergia’s latest Rhodes development, the Peake and Oasis towers, have now been 95 per cent sold and have a range of one-, two-, three-bedroom apartments as well as penthouses and ‘multi-generational’ units that feature two living spaces.

Billbergia’s development director planning and design Saul Moran said buyers wanted “liveability, the convenience of living close to amenity and transport”.

On top of the apartment amenity, Billbergia has developed an $85m sports and recreation centre with childcare, multipurpose courts, a gym and swimming pools.

“(Families) realise they don’t need the big backyard anymore, and once they try high-density living they tend to love it” he said.

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A viral luxury home with custom roulette table, yoga studio, beach club backyard and a Ferrari mural in the eight-car garage has been listed for sale fully furnished within weeks of being completed.

‘Mosman’ at 23 Henderson St, Bulimba, was developed by husband and wife team, Michael and Natalie Ajaje of FBI Interiors, with the help of architect Tim Stewart and McBryde Builders.

The property hit the market in early June and has attracted thousands of likes and shares on social media.

Mr Ajaje said he and his wife put everything into creating each luxury home they developed, but this one was the “biggest and best” yet.

“We over capitalise, probably put too much love into them and build every home like it’s our forever home,” he said.

“We took the best of what we’ve learnt and seen over the years and put everything into ‘Mosman’.

“We do everything from design and selection to furnishing.

“We sell our houses turnkey, fully furnished – what you see is what you buy.

“You can come have the party the same day you buy.”

The couple set out to create ultimate family home with bespoke spaces for the car aficionado, the entertainer, the health conscious and the luxury-seeker.

“We’ve created a bit of a beach vibe out the back, where it’s perfect for entertaining,” he said.

“We actually put the canary palm trees in a couple of years ago when we first started the build.

“There is also a beautiful basement with custom-made roulette table and bar, and a yoga studio.”

Mr Ajaje said his favourite part of the home was the open plan kitchen and living space with curved staircase and arch windows, while the master suite was also a showstopper.

“The master walk-in is like a high end Prada shop with beautiful glass cabinetry … and the concrete bathtub and curved wall in the ensuite is definitely the star of the bathroom,” he said.

“We used lots of venetian plaster and micro-cement to create a European style that feels very suited to Queensland.”

The home sits on a 814 sqm block and is spread across three levels.

In the basement there is an eight-car garage with Ferrari mural, a games lounge and bar, a yoga studio, a bathroom and a lift.

The ground floor includes the open plan living, dining and kitchen space with void, curved staircase and built-in cabinetry.

The kitchen has a curved 5m Taj Mahal island bench, Gaggenau appliances, custom brass rangehoods and a butler’s pantry.

There is also a guest suite, home office, powder room, mudroom and laundry on this level.

To the side of the home there is a garden terrace with fire pit area and to the rear is an outdoor kitchen on a patio overlooking the mosaic-tiled pool, pool house and backyard.

On the top floor, the 120 sqm master suite looks out over the pool and features a dressing room with skylight and display cabinetry, and an ensuite with skylight over a circular bathtub.

The remaining three bedrooms have walk-in robes and ensuites, while a gallery looks out to the voids over the living area, garden terrace and foyer.

Mr Ajaje said it took three years to take ‘Mosman’ from vision to completion and after all that hard work he and his wife were proud to show it off.

“It’s a big relief to have it completed,” he said.

“I’ve been doing 80-hour weeks between (FBI Interiors) and the build, but you have to put a lot of love into a home like this.”

Selling agent Sarah Hackett of Place New Farm said the home was perfect for someone looking for a luxury new home without all the hard work.

“Someone is going to save years of their life and most likely money by buying this home,” she said.

“At this price point, the buyers are usually working mums and dads who are time poor.

“They could spend their time and their money and still not get it quite right.

“Not only has the hard work already been done (at ‘Mosman’) but they have ticked every box and got it just right.”

Ms Hackett said it was hard to not have a reaction when seeing the home in person.

“The ceiling heights are enormous, the staircase was craned in and finished in venetian plaster, the master bedroom is as big as an apartment we’re selling in New Farm, and the roulette table in the wine cellar is Casino-grade,” she said.

‘Mosman’ and 23 Henderson St, Bulimba, is for sale via top offer by Wednesday, July 2, at 4pm.

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