The media headlines might be shouting that the property price boom in Australia is over, but the numbers tell me otherwise.
According to the latest CoreLogic figures, the national rate of growth in dwelling values actually rose in March – slightly – compared to February.
The national rate remains lower that the peak months of 2021, but that is more to do with small price declines being experienced in the Sydney and Melbourne markets dragging the total down.
There are plenty of doomsayers who want to achieve easy publicity by predicting the end of price growth – and indeed some are forecasting price decline – but when you analyse the figures for March, most capital cities and major regional markets are still recording price increases at high growth levels.
CoreLogic provides figures for 15 major jurisdictions – 8 capital cities and 7 state regional markets. And of those 15, 13 recorded house price growth in March, and interestingly, 14 of the 15 recorded growth in apartment prices.
And many of those jurisdictions recorded price growth at boom levels in March.
That’s a very different message to what some of the headlines are telling us at the moment.
In the housing market, there were four markets where the median house price grew by 2% or more in March – and those were Brisbane, regional Queensland, Adelaide and regional South Australia.
Queensland and South Australia were also the strongest states for price growth for the March Quarter – but there is also still very good growth happening in Perth, Canberra, regional New South Wales and Victoria.
One thing is very clear and that is that, overall, the regional markets are outperforming capital city price growth. And I think they will continue to do so.
That has been the case for a little while, but the difference is quite stark now.
In the month of March, house values for the combined regions increased 1.7% while the combined capital cities rose 0.5%.
In the March Quarter, the combined regions increased 5.2% and the capital cities 1.9%.
The smaller cities of Brisbane and Adelaide are the strongest capital city markets. The pace of growth has also increased in Perth, while Canberra, Hobart and Darwin are still producing good numbers.
Despite massive flooding during March, Brisbane recorded a median house price increase of 2.1% for houses and 1.6% for apartments – while auction clearance rates continue to hover around the 70% market.
Based on these early results it would appear that the Brisbane market may shrug off the impact of the flooding quite quickly.
It is still early days but there is no evidence yet that it will have a critical impact on Brisbane property values as a whole.
The latest figures show Brisbane house prices grew by 32.1% in the past 12 months and continues to do really very well – while Adelaide ,with annual price growth of 28.7%, is not far behind.
The only markets showing signs of waning are Sydney and Melbourne – but that’s based on the CoreLogic figures. Other research sources show different results.
For example, with the Melbourne house market, CoreLogic says the median price decreased 0.2% in March, BUT SQM Research says the median house price rose 1.3% in March.
Among the many mistakes made by media in reporting housing markets, is the tendency to simply accept the CoreLogic figures as fact, without any challenge.
I would also remind you of this factor: with many media outlets currently claiming that the property boom is over, this is the fifth time in the past 15 months that media has declared the end of the boom – only to be disproven by subsequent figures.
The first time was in February 2021, when some publications prematurely called the end of the boom, based on one month’s data from CoreLogic.
And in May 2021, there was a resounding chorus of media headlines declaring that the boom was over – again, based on one month’s figures from CoreLogic – but the following month the same publications were reporting that the boom was still happening, after new figures came out.
We’re seeing the same scenario playing out now.
The best advice I can give you is to tune out all the white noise in mainstream media and do some real research.
Don’t read the media reports – get a copy of the CoreLogic report, which is free, and look at what the numbers actually say, free of the media misinformation.
