The leafy Sydney suburb of Centennial Park had the highest median house price in Australia in 2015, says CoreLogic RP Data, but for the city's real estate elite, harbour-front Point Piper still reigns supreme as Australia's most expensive and exclusive suburb. 
Centennial Park, famous for its stately Lang Road mansions, where Nobel Prize-winning writer Patrick White lived and set his novel Eye of the Storm, ranked first with a median value of $6.3 million ahead of Point Piper ($5.9 million) and two other eastern waterfront suburbs, Darling Point and Vaucluse.
The Centennial median value got a statistical boost by virtue of the record $10 million sale of a Federation-style Lang Road mansion to Commonwealth Bank wealth boss Annabel Spring and her husband, Macquarie Bank director Peter Stokes, in   November.
But $10 million would not buy much on Wolseley Road, Point Piper, where the hilltop mansion Mandalay sold for $40 million in   May.
"The figures don't make much sense," said Christie's prestige selling agent Ken Jacobs, who has sold some of Sydney's most expensive harbourside real estate. "Point Piper historically holds the mantle as Australia's most expensive suburb. Last year, Vaucluse achieved the two highest sales, so that speaks for itself."
What the CoreLogic RP Data figures did show was a massive spike in the number of million-dollar median suburbs, dominated by Sydney, on the back of the recent housing boom.
CoreLogic RP Data said at the end of 2015, 530 suburbs had median values above $1 million, up 31 per cent from 406 suburbs in 2014.
NSW accounted for 366 - more than two-thirds - of all million-dollar house and unit suburbs, followed by Victoria (88), WA (38), Queensland (16) and South Australia (12).
CoreLogic RP Data research analyst Cameron Kusher said: "There was a time when housing that cost more than $1 million was seen as exclusive, however, with recent increases in home values, suburbs with a typical home value of more than $1 million are becoming more common."