June 15, 2018

Australian Housing Market Update: June 2018

Nationally dwelling values continued their downwards trend last month; the seventh consecutive month on month decline since the national index series peaked in September last year.

While the national market has slid into reverse, many of the trends we have been following over the past five years have reversed.   For example, regional housing markets are now outperforming the capital cities.  Also, the unit sector has taken over from houses as the best performed, at least in Sydney and Melbourne, where affordability constraints are the highest.  Another change has been that the lower priced end of the market is now showing better conditions than higher priced properties, which is likely the result of more first home buyers as well as affordability barriers preventing more activity across the higher price points.

These trends aren’t always uniform across each of the capital cities and regional markets.

Generally we are seeing growth conditions showing a mild pick up across the regional markets while capital city markets ease.  CoreLogic indices show the combined regional markets recorded a 2.4% rise in dwelling values over the past twelve months while capital city values were down 0.3%.  On a rolling quarterly basis, the performance gap is getting wider, driven by strong conditions across the major centres within close proximity to Sydney and Melbourne, as well as more demand flowing into regional coastal and lifestyle markets.  Additionally, regions linked with the mining sector are showing signs of bottoming out, creating less drag on the headline growth rates across the mining states.

Take a look at the national update or your capital city update by clicking on the relevant link below: