Perth houses are spending longer on the market – except in these suburbs

The time Perth homes spent on the market has blown out to a median of two weeks, according to new data, but houses are still being snapped up in suburbs once considered working-class.

Coolbellup and Nollamara led the pack for quickest home sales, according to the Real Estate Institute of WA data, with a median time on market of six days.

Realty Plus sales executive Fin Greenwood told this masthead Coolbellup has become known as “Coobiaco” among locals who have noticed the transformation of the suburb.

“It’s funny, a lot of the locals who have been there a long time are now calling it Coobiaco [because] things have definitely just gone absolutely nuts over the past couple years,” Greenwood said.

Coolbellup was established in 1954 as an almost entirely State Housing Commission-built suburb and was home to several new experiments in social housing.

According to the City of Cockburn, experiments included: the Native Welfare Department buying up dozens of houses to give Aboriginal families suburban homes; transitory accommodation for new migrants and large blocks of flats being built to increase the housing density for various economic and family situations.

Flash forward to 2026 and the median sale price for a house in Coolbellup is $930,000.

While house sales have grown exponentially over the past few years, Greenwood said it has been a “steady increase”.

“We’ve definitely had such a massive pool of buyers over the past few months, and I think it’s got to a point where there hasn’t been much stock, and anything that comes on goes pretty quickly,” he said.

As for what draws buyers to the area, Greenwood says the suburb as a whole is appealing to all demographics.

“I think it’s a great suburb, if you look at the surrounding suburbs, it’s still got great value compared to everything surrounding like Hilton, Kardinya and Hamilton Hill,” he said.

“And it’s so close to the beach, there’s lots of parks, and there’s lots of subdivision and development potential for people, so yeah, it’s a great area.”

Also among the fast-selling suburbs were Subiaco, Hillarys, Forrestfield, Dianella, and Iluka, which had a median time spent on the market of seven days, followed by Yokine, Woodvale, and Lesmurdie with eight days.

While the average house sold in a median of 14 days in May, three months earlier they were being snapped up in nearly half the time, selling in an average of nine days.

On the opposite end of the market, the suburbs in Perth where homes take the longest to sell face wait times of almost 50 days.

The median time on the market it took to sell h