Australian Market sees Weaker Housing Conditions

2019 kicked off in a similar fashion to how 2018 ended – with dwelling values broadly falling across most regions of Australia.

National dwelling values fell 1% over the month of January, which is the 13^th monthly fall to occur in the past 15 months.

CoreLogic’s national dwelling index is now down by 6.1% since the market peaked in October 2017. The weakest conditions continued to be centred in Sydney and Melbourne where values have fallen at least 1% on a monthly basis since November 2018.

Both capital cities have seen a deceleration in the past three months with rolling quarterly falls tracking at its fastest pace since the downturned commenced. Sydney’s dwelling values were down by 4.5% over the three months ending in January 2019; these results take Sydney’s dwelling values back to levels last seen two and a half years ago. While Melbourne, where the market peaked four months after Sydney, has seen its dwelling values are down 4% to where they were in January of 2017.

While most of the tension is on the two major capital cities, weaker housing conditions are evident across most of the capital cities. Every capital city, apart from Canberra, has recorded month-on-month fall in January. While only two capital cities have recorded a rise in dwelling values over the three-month period ending January.

While values haven’t been falling across every broad region of the country, the Australian market has overall lost some steam. Darwin is the only capital city to see its annual change in dwelling values to improve in comparison to a year ago.

While Brisbane has remained absolutely flat over the past 12 months. When compared to inflation and growing wages in Queensland, this has resulted in stronger affordability in the market – showing some hope when considering the strong rental yields and population growth of the city.