Another 13 suburbs have joined the ranks of having a $1 million median house price as Melbourne real estate gets richer.

And the city’s wealth is spreading to its edges, with suburbs as far as 50 kilometres from the CBD reaching seven figures.

There are now 164 suburbs with median prices above the Melbourne median of $903,859, and 143 of those have prices greater than $1 million.

Cranbourne South and Wantirna South are among the 13 suburbs where house prices cracked $1 million for the first time, according to the latest Domain Group data.

Just scraping into the $1 million club, Wantirna South had strong growth of 22.8 per cent in the year to December 2017.

A surprising addition to Melbourne’s million dollar suburb list was Cranbourne South. The greenfield suburb had only 13 sales in the December quarter, which pushed the median to $1,030,000, up from $945,500 in the September quarter.

Well-performing schools and the Knox shopping centre redevelopment were attracting more buyers to Wantirna South, Barry Plant Wantirna director Daniel Cripps said.

“You’ve got primary schools like Knox Gardens – which is now in the 95th percentile in the NAPLAN results – it’s those sorts of forces that are really drawing families into this area,” Mr Cripps said.

He said the Westfield Knox revamp – mooted for 2019 – would make it the second-largest shopping centre in the southern hemisphere.

“People are looking forward into the future and understanding the impact such development is going to have on the area,” he said.

Cranbourne South’s large attracted investors looking for future subdivision, said Brent Day from Obrien Real Estate.

“Cranbourne South I think has been kind of a sleeper until now and I think people are buying there now because it’s a little bit cheaper than Somerville and Pearcedale nearby,” Mr Day said.

He said other buyers were often families with small businesses who needed acreage to store equipment.

“They’ve got some equity and they’re buying some more land for their businesses,” he said.

The inner west continued to perform well, with Spotswood and Kingsville pushing past $1 million.

Tightly-held Spotswood usually had fewer than 30 sales per year, said buyers’ advocate Cate Bakos, and nearby Kingsville – which had growth of 21.5 per cent for the year to December – was also small, but had more sales.

“The houses are a lot more homogenous in style – mostly gorgeous Edwardians and Californian bungalows. There’s less price variation than Spotswood,” Ms Bakos said.

She said the inner west would continue to perform given its proximity to the city and its prices were still relatively low compared with the inner east.

“There will always people who are looking for a period property, near a village and near a train station at the $1 million mark – you can’t replicate that on the other side of the city,” she said.

Just four suburbs have a median below $400,000; they are Millgrove ($339,500), Melton ($360,000), Kurunjang ($378,000) and Melton South ($380,000).

There are 25 suburbs with a median between $900,000 and $1 million; including Mentone ($981,000), Preston ($950,000) and Altona ($900,000).

Knocking on the $2 million club’s door are Elsternwick ($1,972,500), Hampton ($1,955,000), Glen Iris ($1.92 million), Ivanhoe East ($1,911,250), Caulfield North ($1.91 million) and Balwyn North ($1.9 million).

Elevated into the exclusive $2 million club were Surrey Hills (up from $1.85 million in the September quarter) and tiny Parkville, up from $1,717,500 to $2,087,500.

The city’s priciest suburbs remain Toorak ($4,395,000), Canterbury ($3,082,944) and Deepdene at $2,965,000. East Melbourne dropped slightly, with a quarterly median of $2.85 million – down from $3.65 million in the September quarter.

Suburbs that saw some growth in December but were down for the year included South Morang, which fell 29.9 per cent for the year to $601,000, and Springvale South which saw a drop of 22.8 per cent to $705,000.

South Morang was facing competition from its newer neighbour, Mernda, said Josh Allison from Harcourts Thomastown. Mernda’s median climbed 12.8 per cent over 2017 to $535,500.

“It won’t be too long until people realise that ‘hey, we’re spending a lot of money in Mernda, we could actually be getting something closer to the city for the same price in South Morang’,” he said.