It will probably surprise many people to learn that house prices are rising in most Australian capital cities at the moment.

That’s according to the new House Price Report from one of the nation’s leading real estate websites, domain.com.au.

The Domain report indicates that house prices rose in the December Quarter in five of the eight capital cities.

The report records house price growth in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart and Darwin in the December Quarter, led by the 3.3% quarterly rise in Darwin.

And those cities, except Melbourne, also recorded annual growth in their house prices.

The Domain figures indicate that Adelaide house prices rose 10% in 2022, while Perth rose around 6% and Darwin and Hobart recorded smaller increases.

The weakest market has been Sydney, where house prices dropped 11% in 2022, including a 2.1% decrease in the December Quarter.

Brisbane also fell in the December Quarter, by 1.8%, and because of the size and weight of those two big cities, the overall average result for the combined capital cities was a decrease of 0.7% in the December Quarter and a 5% decrease for the year.

But the Domain analysis finds that this overall December Quarter result means that the worst of the downturn is over.

It says in its analysis:

“Australia’s housing market downturn lost momentum over the December Quarter with combined capital house prices declining six times slower and unit prices three times slower than the previous quarter.

“This suggests that the peak rate of the quarterly decline has passed, as the September Quarter bore the brunt of the initial shock of rising interest rates and exorbitant inflation levels causing house prices to fall at the fastest quarterly rate on record.”

Now, the reason I began by commenting that many of you would be surprised to hear that prices have risen in five of the eight capital cities, is that the media keeps telling us that prices are plummeting, nosediving or collapsing everywhere.

The reason they do that is because, generally speaking, media doesn’t care too much about being accurate or fair or reasonable, and it certainly doesn’t care about helping Australian consumers with good information.

It simply wants to generate clickbait headlines and so media will usually emphasise any sensational negatives it can find – or invent.

This is fed by the publicity tarts at CoreLogic, who always have the most negative figures of all the property research entities – and who will always focus on the negatives in their data to maximise their publicity opportunities.

So, given that the Domain figures are so different to the CoreLogic figures, you may wonder whose data you can believe.

This is a question I’m asked repeatedly – who has the best price data?

The reality is that all real estate data is dodgy data to a certain degree.

Whether it’s prices, rents, vacancies or yields, they’re all rubbery figures.

But, given the choice between Domain or CoreLogic, I would choose Domain every time, because I believe they take greater care with their research analyst, whereas CoreLogic’s biggest motivation is maximising publicity.

In their haste to be first to publish data on prices, they can be a tad sloppy.

Domain takes more care and their figures overall are more accurate and realistic.

So, let me repeat, according to Domain, more capital cities have rising prices than those that have falling prices.

And that gives further weight to our forecast that the property prices are likely to rise in 2023 and that many locations across Australia will deliver capital growth this year.