The Middle 50%

When measuring housing prices the median sale price i.e. the mid point sale, is most commonly used. It is considered a better measure of the typical sale than the average sale price which can be skewed by one or two abnormally high or low sales.

A statistic which is rarely mentioned but is arguably more helpful than both for determining what typical is for a given suburb is the Interquartile Range. To determine it we take away the top 25% of sales and the bottom 25% and are left with the middle 50%. To my mind this range tells us a lot more about values in an area than a single mid point figure.

For the 12 months to the end of September 2012 the IQR for houses in our region was as follows;

• Killcare $683,125 – $932,500
• Killcare Heights $522,500 – $780,000
• Hardys Bay $530,000 – $680,000
• Pretty Beach $420,000 – $577,500
• Wagstaffe $350,000 – $540,000
• Macmasters Beach $559,500 – $952,500

So on this metric we have Killcare and Macmasters Beach sharing the crown as highest value areas by a fairly healthy margin (for the last 12 months anyway).