What's driving the $705,000 median house price in Brown Hill?

The median house price growth of Brown Hill was the top suburb in the first quarter in Ballarat, with a 8.5 per cent rise, according to the latest data from the Real Estate Institute of Victoria (REIV).

The median house price of the suburb grew 18.9 percent, from $596,000 to $705,000, in the past 12 months. Meanwhile, Ballarat's median house price fell by 3.4 per cent to $541,841.

Hidden Orchard harvest leader Ellen Burns, who spent most of her life in Brown Hill, said she was not surprised about the growth of property value in her suburb.

"It has been a big change over the time - there used to be a lot of empty blocks," Ms Burns said. "Now there are so many houses."

According to the latest data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the number of dwellings, including houses and units, in 2021 were 1880, more than double the number in 2001.

Ray White Ballarat director Peter Ludbrook said there was an amount of new developments in Brown Hill in the past decade.

Mr Ludbrook said there were "two completely different markets" in the suburb, "the old original Brown Hill market" and "the newer, modern, contemporary type family homes".

Mr Ludbrook said the traditional price people paid for a older house in Brown Hill ranged from $400,000 to $500,000.

He said the newer homes, which were more than $700,000 had come onto the market and the older ones hadn't been available, pushing the median price up.

Mr Ludbrook said the housing stock in Brown Hill was relatively lower than other suburbs in Ballarat, which also had an impact on prices.

He said the buyers of the higher-end property market in the suburb would be families, who would look for upsizing into something bigger and better.

Mr Ludbrook said Brown Hill's location on the Melbourne side of Ballarat was "pretty desirable from a local perspective" .

"From a commuting perspective, the ability to commute from Brown Hill to Melbourne is probably close to a 30-minute difference between leaving from Brown Hill as opposed to leaving from Winter Valley."

Ms Burns said more and more people had moved to Brown Hill in the past five years.

According to ABS, the population of Brown Hill has reached 4489 by 2021, a 25-per-cent growth from 2016.

Ms Burns said there had been some improvements in the area.

Involving in the drafting of the Brown Hill local area plan in 2018, Ms Burns said the residents wanted was a cafe but they were told there wasn't enough people and business.

"One cafe went in [Brown Hill] in 2022 and it's going really well. There must have been enough business for them," Ms Burns said.

"We also have our post office back in [2022], which is amazing," she said.