If you’ve ever searched property prices online, you’ve probably noticed something strange: two respected real estate property platforms can give you completely different figures for the same suburb. One says the median house price is up; the other says it’s down. One says the median is $870,000, another says $840,000. Who’s right?
This article unpacks why Realestate.com.au (REA) and Your Investment Property magazine (YIP) often report very different median house prices and growth trends for the same suburb. We’ll explore the data sources, methodologies, and motivations behind each platform, helping both everyday buyers and sophisticated investors make sense of the numbers.
Here at NP Property Group we use a mixture of public and private information to assess the market including direct from the selling agent, developers and our own data sets built up over 30 years, as well as monitor online platforms for potentially misleading inconsistencies.
As both valuers and real estate agents, often we’ll hear sellers claiming nearby sales are higher than we assess the given market will genuinely support. When sellers eyes are blinkered by overstated asking prices or stale listings that do not reveal the actual price the property is sold for, it becomes difficult to convince even the most motivated seller to market the property at a realistic asking price first off, potentially missing out on the market peak.
Eyes wide open, interested buyers will provide feedback often based on the condition and unique features of the property we pass on to the seller which is often resisted, due to REA giving a rosier than reality view of the current market in that suburb and resistance to discount for visible defects requiring repairs or allow for the differences in amenity, building age, condition and presentation compared to other sales of the same dwelling type, and number of bedrooms, bathrooms and car accommodation – which buyers are naturally laser focussed on.
Whereas, overoptimistic sellers can look at the suburb report on realestate.com instantly and for free, where they can be given a distorted view – which may lead to more days on market or loss of sale in the worst case due to turning down a good offer due to unrealistic expectations. This is because the seller’s mindset is fundamentally tilted towards the best case scenario – buoyed by the vision that it is their home that sets the top sale price in the suburb, which psychologically, helps soften the blow of paying the agent’s commission and increasingly eyewatering online marketing campaign costs.
In other words, it pays for REA to inflate the current market strength, (within justifiable statistical limits and norms) because sellers pay their fees – whether or not – the property sells and the longer it take to sell, the more fees REA earns.
Let’s embark on this tale of two suburbs, both in the same place, with the same name and postcode.
The Snapshot: One Suburb, Two Stories
Let’s take Edge Hill, a suburb in Cairns, Queensland, as an example.
- REA (via PropTrack) reports the median house price at $870,000 with a 12 – month growth rate of 14.3%, based on 56 house sales.
- YIP (via RP Data/Cotality) gives a median of $840,000, with growth at 15.82%, based on 76 sales in the past 12 months.
That’s a $30,000 difference in the median price and nearly 1.5 percentage points of growth variation – despite covering the same suburb, in the same country, over (roughly) the same period.
Why? The answer lies in how each figure is calculated, and who each dataset is designed to serve.
Who Are the Data Providers?
Realestate.com.au – Powered by PropTrack
- Owner: REA Group
- Data Engine: PropTrack (REA’s in – house property analytics firm)
- Focus: Live listings, vendor sentiment, and buyer engagement
PropTrack aggregates listing data and select settled sales to deliver fast – moving market insights. REA uses this to inform home buyers and sellers on current prices and trends. Think of PropTrack as the engine behind many of the consumer – facing graphs and medians you’ll see on REA.
Your Investment Property (YIP) – Powered by RP Data (Cotality)
- Owner: Your Investment Property Magazine (independent)
- Data Engine: RP Data trading as CoreLogic Australia (rebranded globally as Cotality in March 2025)
- Focus: Comprehensive settled sales, adjusted for valuation modelling
RP Data/Cotality is Australia’s leading property data firm, used by banks, property valuers, governments, and large investors. It provides the raw property sales and modelled valuation data that underpin YIP’s suburb profiles, forecasts, and investment analyses. It is used by us at NP Property and National Pacific Valuers as a generally reliable base to touchpoint to start our rigorous professional valuation and appraisal processes.
Methodology Matters: Listing Data vs Settled Sales
The most important reason these numbers differ is how “median price” is defined and calculated.
Realestate.com.au (REA / PropTrack)
- Median Sale Price: Simple median of recent settled sale prices, often filtered or trimmed
- Sales Sample: Often a smaller dataset (56 in Edge Hill) due to tighter timeframes or exclusion filters
- Purpose: Quick market signals for everyday buyers and sellers
PropTrack excludes some unusual or incomplete sales (e.g. mortgagee sales, dual occupancies, or older data). The result? A cleaner, simpler number that reflects what REA users want to know: what are homes selling for now?
Your Investment Property (YIP / Cotality)
- Hedonic Median Value: Based on all settled sales, then adjusted using statistical models (hedonic regression)
- Sales Sample: Often larger (76 in Edge Hill), and more inclusive
- Purpose: Reliable tracking of true market value for investment and valuation
Cotality’s approach controls for variables like number of bedrooms, land size, and house quality. This helps investors and financial institutions understand the underlying value movement, rather than price shifts driven by occasional high – end or low – end sales.
What “Hedonic” Means
The Hedonic Median Value is a refined way of measuring property prices that adjusts for differences in property characteristics – like size, location, number of bedrooms, and quality – so you get a more accurate picture of market trends than a simple median.
- It comes from hedonic regression, a statistical method that estimates the value of a property based on its features.
- Instead of just taking the middle sale price (which can be skewed by what types of homes sold), it controls for variations in the mix of properties sold.
How It Differs from a Standard Median
| Metric | What It Does | Pros | Cons |
| Standard Median | Middle price in a sorted list of sales | Simple, fast to calculate | Skewed by mix of properties |
| Hedonic Median | Adjusted median based on property features | More accurate market signal | Requires complex modelling |
Why It’s Used
- Helps avoid compositional bias: for example, if only luxury homes sold one month, the standard median would spike, even if prices didn’t actually rise.
- Used by platforms like RP Data /Cotality to track real market movements.
So if you’re comparing suburbs or tracking trends over time, the hedonic median gives you a clearer view of what’s really happening in the market.
Limitations
Unlike Hedonic, property valuers will also consider various other factors such as unpublished property condition only visible on expert inspection, council planning overlays most commonly flood and bushfire mapping.
Two Audiences, Two Realities
REA: Tailored for Home Buyers & Sellers
- Visual, quick – access price estimates
- Emphasizes current market sentiment
- Encourages action: list, buy, or sell now
REA’s median prices are designed to build seller confidence and help buyers understand listing prices relative to local trends. They lean optimistic, particularly in hot markets. That’s not deception – it’s marketing, and it’s highly effective (and lucrative).
YIP: Tailored for Investors, Bankers, Analysts
- Long – term trend analysis
- True value growth over time
- Comparable suburb performance
YIP is designed for readers who want reliable, apples – to – apples data that shows how a suburb is really performing. Their medians better reflect how much people actually pay, not what vendors hope to achieve.
Why REA Medians Are Often Higher
Listing Influence: In some reports, REA may incorporate vendor listing prices, which are often higher than final sale prices.
Sale Filtering: PropTrack might exclude certain sales types (e.g. discount sales or older homes). Sample Size: A smaller, higher – end sample can push the median up. Recency Weighting: If recent months saw more high – end sales, REA’s medians jump faster.
These aren’t errors – they’re design choices. REA is a portal business that thrives when people are actively selling. Their price signals encourage momentum.
Which method does REA use?
REA (realestate.com.au) uses the median price – not the average – when reporting property prices. That means they sort all property sale prices from lowest to highest over a given period (typically 12 months), and then select the middle value in that list.
So in our example with 11 sales:
- Five properties sold at $1M
- One property sold at $5M
- Five more sold at $1M
Sorted list:
$1M, $1M, $1M, $1M, $1M, $5M, $1M, $1M, $1M, $1M, $1M
The 6th value is $5M, so REA would report the median as $5M, not the average of all sales ($1.36M). REA says, this approach helps avoid distortion from outliers, like a single ultra – expensive home, when assessing typical market prices.
Wait what?
You’re absolutely right to question that – it’s intuitively contradictory, when the outlier becomes the median, especially in a skewed distribution like our example. Here’s how REA and other property data analysts typically justify it:
Why Use the Median Despite Outliers?
- Robustness to Extremes: The median is less affected by extreme values than the mean. Even if the middle value is an outlier, it’s still just one data point – whereas the mean would be influenced significantly by that $5M sale.
- Reflects Market Segments: In areas with a mix of ultra – high and standard – priced homes, the median can highlight shifts in buyer behaviour. A single $5M sale might indicate growing interest in luxury properties, which some analysts want to capture.
- Consistency Over Time: Median prices are used to track trends. Even if the current median is skewed, comparing it to previous medians still shows how the market is moving.
But Yes, It Has Limitations
- Small Sample Sizes: With only 11 sales, one high – value transaction can dominate the median. REA typically prefers at least 30 sales to reduce volatility.
- Doesn’t Represent “Typical” Value: The median doesn’t always reflect what most buyers are paying. That’s why REA also reports quartiles and average prices to give more context.
If you’re analysing a suburb and see a median that feels off, it’s always worth checking the sales volume and distribution.
Why This Matters:
Even though 10 out of 11 homes sold for $1M, the median is $5M because it happens to be the middle value in the sorted list. This is a great example of how small sample sizes and skewed distributions can make the median misleading.
If you’re comparing suburbs or tracking trends, it’s smart to look at multiple metrics – median, mean, quartiles, and even volume of sales – to get the full picture.
Fine for an Odd number, what about Even number of sales?
With an even number of sales (like 44), there’s no single “middle” property. But statisticians have a solution for this.
How the Median Is Calculated with an Even Number
When there’s an even number of property sales:
- All sale prices are ranked from lowest to highest.
- The two middle prices – the 22nd and 23rd in this case – are identified.
- The median price is then calculated as the average of those two values.
Example:
Let’s say the 22nd price was $490,000 and the 23rd was $700,000.
The median would be:
($490,000 + $700,000) ÷ 2 = $595,000
This method attempts to keeps things fair and avoid skewing the result by choosing either one arbitrarily. Of course if the 22nd sale price was ultra – high and followed by another ultra – high price in the sequence the median would still be an outlier. Best to keep one eye on the mean…
Why YIP Figures Are Often Lower (But More Stable)
- Hedonic Modelling: Cotality adjusts for property differences, dampening extremes.
- Full Data Inclusion: All settled sales count, even if small or discounted.
- Stabilisation: Stratified median estimates smooth out month – to – month volatility.
- Investment Lens: The goal is value reflection, not market excitement.
For long – term planners and professional investors, YIP’s approach is more useful. It avoids overreacting to short – term market heat or coolness.
Who Should Use Which?
| User Type | Best Source | Why |
| First – time Buyer | REA (PropTrack) | See what’s actively on market now and what asking prices look like |
| Owner – occupier Seller | REA | Good sense of competition and timing for listing |
| Investor (Long – term) | YIP ( Cotality) | More accurate long – term capital growth trends |
| Bank/Lender | RP Data (Cotality) | Regulatory – grade data for credit risk and valuation |
| Buyer’s Agent / Valuer | RP Data (Cotality) | Needed for nuanced pricing and forecasting |
New Players, Same Pattern
Other property sites like Domain, Homely, OnTheHouse or OpenAgent often face similar challenges. Some rely on APM, SQM, PriceFinder, or Valuer General data, each with its quirks.
Reported Sales Volume
Here’s what we found on house sales in Mooroobool over the past 12 months:
Domain reports 106 house sales in Mooroobool over the past year. This figure sits between REA PropTrack’s 97 and YIP/Cotality’s 122. According to OnTheHouse, Mooroobool recorded 149 house sales over the past 12 months.
Yet in this particular case, on this particular day (17 November 2025), the median house price for Mooroobool happens to match on both REA PropTrack and YIP/Cotality at $630,000. While On the House has it at $687,648. An almost $60,000 difference on the same day, even though Your Investment Property Magazine (YIP) and OnTheHouse both licence and reproduce data from the same source, Cotality.
Industry comparisons and commentary indicate that Domain and OnTheHouse may omit certain transactions or simplify presentation to serve consumer – friendly interfaces (e.g. rounding, aggregate value ranges, filtering out edge – case sales).
Summary of Reported House Sales
| Source | Reported Sales | Notes |
| Your Investment Property Magazine | 122 | RP Data / Cotality – based, may include wider transaction types |
| OnTheHouse | 149 | RP Data / Cotality – Broadest inclusion, likely off market & private sales |
| Domain | 106 | In house – Listing based (likely includes Insight Data Solutions, Realbase data) filtered differently |
| REA PropTrack | 97 | In house – Listing based, likely excludes off – market deals |
What This Tells Us
The variation reflects differences in: data scope (e.g. off – market vs. listed), update frequency, suburb boundary definitions and classification of property types. If you’re analysing trends or making investment decisions, it’s best to treat these numbers as approximations and use multiple sources for triangulation.
Final Tips for Buyers and Investors
Consumer – focused platforms promote recency and seller sentiment, while investor – grade platforms prioritize accuracy, stability, and comprehensiveness.
- Always check the sales volume behind the median. A 10 – sale sample is less reliable than 100.
- Understand the methodology. Listing price medians are not the same as sale price medians.
- Use both REA and YIP to your advantage:
- REA shows the mood and momentum reflects the heat of the moment
- YIP shows the deeper trend reflecting the value underneath
Smart buyers, sellers, and investors use both.
Whether you’re deciding when to sell, where to buy, or how much equity your portfolio has gained, knowing the intent behind the numbers can mean the difference between a lucky guess and an informed strategy.
At NP Property and National Pacific Valuers, we know that every data point tells a story – but not always the whole story. That’s why our team combines deep local experience, on – the – ground intelligence, and independent valuation methodologies to interpret the numbers others simply publish.
Whether you’re buying your first home, farm or commercial premises, selling a family asset, or analysing an entire portfolio, we’ll help you cut through the noise and act with confidence.
Contact us today to discuss how we can support your next move – whether you need a market appraisal, pre – sale strategy, or independent valuation advice that holds up under scrutiny.
Visit sales@npproperty.com.au or admin@nationalpacificvaluers.com.au or phone us on 07 4032 1627 to speak with our experienced team.
