Real estate consumers have been drowning in forecasts about big decreases in prices – from the people I call the usual suspects, who have such bad track records in predicting property prices. So it’s refreshing to see a credible figure actually predicting that prices will rise in 2023 – and getting big media coverage for it.
Louis Christopher of SQM Research has published his Housing Boom and Bust report, which forecasts recovery in the major cities. He presents a range of scenarios with different estimates of the impacts on property prices: under his base case, Christopher assumes unemployment will not rise very high, inflation will peak and then come down, and the RBA will stop lifting interest rates in the first half of 2023.
Under this base case, he expects house prices to rise in 2023 in all capital cities except Darwin. He is projecting moderate but solid price growth generally, with the capital city average being a rise of up to 7%.
While this forecast is encouraging, I think he is being quite conservative. I think price growth in 2023 will be more bullish than that.
