There are also properties with gains of $4133 for a two-bedroom apartment in Glen Huntly to a gain of $175,000 for a two-bedroom apartment in St Kilda East.

These however make up only 1 per cent of the sample The other 49 per cent of the sample size were right on the market.

"Melbourne is a resilient market and is catching up to Sydney. But there's a concern that off-the-plan apartments are oversupplied," Mr Pabst said.

"There will be a number of people who are going to get caught out by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority changing the goal post. People are going to have deal with falling prices."

APRA clamped down on banks' lending to investors restricting growth to under 10 per cent a year. With falling property values, many recent off-the-plan buyers might find themselves in a tight spot at settlement a few years from now.

But in the the biggest housing market, Sydney, it's a different story.

"I think the fall in apartment values is very specific to the Melbourne market. I don't think you can see that in Sydney," Herron Todd White's Sydney director Kim Quick said.

"A lot of the Sydney market has caught up to today's prices. There could some areas where values drop but generally in Sydney the market has caught up to the enthusiasm."


Ms Quick said many who have acquired off-the-plans cheaply in Sydney when there was a slump during the credit crisis in 2009 and 2010 have been rewarded with a value catch-up today.

The x-factor that Sydney has which Melbourne does not is the high number of infrastructure projects lined up by the NSW government, Ms Quick added.

Places like Liverpool which is close to Sydney's second airport Badgerys Creek will not lose value. The same goes for Parramatta, the second CBD for Sydney, which has 20 years of infrastructure improvements planned.

"All these units will retail their level. Some units in the lower north shore could come back a little. And areas like the St George area such as Bankstown, Kogarah and Wolli Creek could also come back a little due to the volume of constructions out there," Ms Quick said.

For off-the-plan valuation, volume of constructions and the scale of the project surrounding the apartment affect its valuation.

An apartment acquired with the right amount of privacy and sunlight may have lost those qualities if a new tower comes up next to it.

The aspect of the apartment as well as the amount of promised amenities also affect valuations.

"If the developer promised stone, or a ducted air vent but does not deliver them, this can also affect the final valuation," Ms Quick said.

"Off-the-plan purchases come with a lot of risks especially in big-scale projects. When you buy a little unit, you don't know what you are going to get."

In the same argument, the more developed a suburb, the more an apartment or property holds its value.

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