Byron Bay leads Australia’s coast growth

Byron Bay has been the best performing coastal area over the past five years significantly outperforming other towns across Australia's east coast.

Coastal areas have traditionally performed strongly in the market and Byron Bay is leading the way showing 25.4 per cent growth over the past five years.

Following behind is Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, which has grown 25 per cent over the past five years.

Domain Group senior economist Andrew Wilson took a closer look at how ten coastal LGA's performed.

Dr Wilson said the coastal markets are part holiday home areas and part sea-change locations, meaning that the results are very mixed.

"Byron is the stand out market," Dr Wilson said.

"It reflects sea changers more than anything and has been coming off a lower base. It's a boutique market and more tightly held and in the last year it has seen a revival."On the Gold Coast, two suburbs' median prices pushed ahead. Palm Beach and Miami have increased by 11.7 per cent, bringing the median prices to $570,000 and $557,500 respectively.

The best performing Victorian suburb, Anglesea has a nine per cent median price uptick to $607,500.

Somers dropped 2.7 per cent, however it saw a 53.7 per cent median price jump over five years.

"It's clearly a gentrifying area," Dr Wilson said.

McCrae, Blairgowrie and Rye have also seen strong upticks, with 7.8 per cent, 7.0 per cent and 6.9 per cent increases respectively.

In general, Dr Wilson said that the Melbourne market has remained quite flat.

He noted that flexitime work arrangements could be a contributor to the increasing popularity of lifestyle properties, especially ones within a close proximity to a CBD.