Are Dee Why Units Really Booming?

September 2, 2026

Every property site I check says the same thing about Dee Why: units up 10-14% on the year, houses down 4-7%. Units booming, houses sliding.

We've been looking at buying here, so I wanted to check that against the actual sales. NSW publishes every single one, free, updated weekly.

Across 2023 to 2025 units are up 18.7% and houses are up 15.5%. Both climbing, within a few points of each other. Whatever is driving the "units are booming, houses are falling" story, it isn't in the sales records.

Those are full-year medians, off 580 unit sales and 216 house sales a year. Quarter by quarter the house numbers bounce around a lot, because a quarter only has 40-70 house sales in it, so I'd rather lean on the annual figure for the big claim.

So where does 14% come from?

Units didn't climb steadily. They jumped once. 2025Q2 went from $947,500 to $1,100,000, up 16.1% in a single quarter, and then just sat there: $1,100,000, then $1,110,500, then $1,100,000, then $1,130,000. Four quarters, flat as anything.

The RBA cut in February and May 2025. The jump lands right on top of those cuts. Measure twelve months from before the step to after it and you get your 14%, but nothing had moved since mid-2025.

Then what happened last quarter?

Units fell to $987,500. Down 12.6% in one quarter, off 130 sales, and houses dropped 19.2% at the same time. First real fall in the series.

Why? 🤷‍♂️ I can't tell you, and I don't think anyone can from this data. The RBA's third hike of 2026 was on 5 May. The Budget that replaced the CGT discount and quarantined negative gearing was on 12 May. Seven days apart. There is no way to pull those two apart with suburb-level sales.

One caveat on that last quarter. Sales take a median 52 days to turn up in the public records, so 2026Q2 has 130 unit sales where a normal quarter has about 155. The direction looks solid, the exact number will move a bit as the rest land.

The bit I took from this: the figure everyone quotes is measuring a step change from 14 months ago. Dee Why units were flat for a year and are now falling.

I'd like to run the same thing on a suburb with a different investor mix. If the Budget is doing the work rather than the rate hike, it should show up there and not here.