Perth continues to be Australia’s strongest property market, with a busy and competitive housing scene and rising prices.

The key information for real estate consumers is that Perth remains a long way short of having fulfilled its potential for growth.

There’s still plenty of price rises to come.

And one of the reasons for that is that Perth remains one of the most affordable markets in capital city Australia.

According to the CoreLogic Home Value Index published early in August, the median house price for Perth is $625,000.

That’s less than half the median price in Sydney, which is now over $1.3 million, and a long way below Melbourne’s $924,000.

It all falls well short of the $960,000 in Canberra and the $820,000 in Brisbane.

Even Adelaide and Hobart are significantly more expensive than Perth.

Indeed, in Adelaide you pay $100,000 more for the average house than you do in Perth.

Only Darwin among the capital cities has cheaper houses than Perth.

It’s a similar scenario for apartments, where only Darwin has prices below those in Perth.

In Perth the median price for units is $420,000, compared to $820,000 in Sydney and over $600,000 in both Canberra and Melbourne.

So buyers of all kinds are clamouring to buy in the capital of Western Australia, which has one of the strongest economies, healthiest state budgets and fastest growing populations in the nation.

With all that going in its favour, you might expect Perth to be leading the nation on price growth recently.

But it’s not. It’s doing well, but Sydney leads in terms of growth in house prices in the year to ndate, up 7%, while Perth has grown 4%.

What all of that says to me is that Perth still has plenty of scope for strong growth in property prices.

It still has some way to go to fulfil its potential in the current growth cycle.