Melissa Jenkins
(Australian Associated Press)
If you’re a spring property vendor secretly hoping to get significantly more than the Joneses did down the street you may be in for a rude shock.
Traditionally spring is considered the best season to sell as gardens burst into bloom, the warmer weather encourages people out to auctions and buyers are keen to be settled into their new abodes in time for Christmas.
But the numbers aren’t on your side this spring, with prices in Sydney actually slipping 0.3 per over the past month and Melbourne values lifting 0.7 per cent, preliminary figures from property analytics firm CoreLogic show.
It’s a more positive picture in Brisbane, where values are up almost half a percentage point for the month, while prices remain frozen in Adelaide and in reverse in Perth.
Real Estate Institute of Australia president Malcolm Gunning said the momentum in the market had dissipated, particularly in Sydney, where people looking to upgrade or move out of the capital in favour of a tree or sea change had already done so over recent years.
“What we are are seeing now is a lack of urgency,” he said.
The national auction clearance rate rose to 68.1 per cent in the week to last Sunday, up from 66.3 per cent the prior week, when volumes fell due to long weekends in NSW and Victoria.
But the rate was well below the 76.4 per cent recorded at the same time last year and clearance rates remain below 70 per cent in every capital city, except Melbourne.
Mr Gunning said up until around five years ago clearance rates around 60 per cent were considered reasonably good, adding there now appeared to be a gap between buyer and vendor expectations.
“People have got to come to terms with readjusting their thinking,” he said.
“A lot of the thinking is ‘if that next door property sold last year for one price, mine has got to be worth 10 per cent more’ – this is human nature, this is the greed factor that gets involved.”
Mr Gunning said while growth in Sydney and Melbourne is slowing, key regional markets in those states were benefiting as infrastructure gets better and educational and job opportunities improve.
He said Bendigo and Ballarat in Victoria and Port Macquarie and Byron Shire in NSW were attractive to self-funded retirees and young families.
CAPITAL CITY PRIVATE TREATY MEDIAN PRICES
HOUSES
Sydney – $950,000
Melbourne – $734,000
Canberra – $639,900
Darwin – $560,000
Brisbane – $525,100
Perth – $510,000
Adelaide – $442,375
Hobart – $385,500
Combined capitals – $701,605
UNITS
Sydney – $730,000
Melbourne – $538,000
Canberra – $401,000
Brisbane – $396,500
Perth – $388,000
Darwin – $341,000
Adelaide – $321,000
Hobart – $285,500
Combined capitals – $577,455
Source: CoreLogic Property Market Indicator Summary week ending October 8, 2017.
