Home price falls of 2022 ‘now fully reversed’
More stock coming to market has done little to dampen strong outcomes for vendors
More stock coming to market has done little to dampen strong outcomes for vendors
The Australian property market has recovered all of its 2022 losses, with national home values reaching a new record high in the first month of the busy spring season. New PropTrak data reveals national home values rose by 0.35 percent last month to a median of $754,000.
National prices are up 3.75 percent over the past 12 months, with the combined capital cities recording a stronger rate of growth at 4.76 percent while the combined regions clocked up price gains of 1.28%. PropTrak senior economist Eleanor Creagh said the seasonal increase in the number of homes for sale this spring has done nothing to curtail price growth.
“Despite the uplift in the number of properties coming to market, national home prices have moved higher again, regaining 2022’s rapid price falls in entirety to reach a record high in September,” said Ms Creagh.
“While a sharp increase in the number of properties hitting the market in Sydney and Melbourne has been improving choice for buyers, strong demand has seen prices continue to lift.
“Choice for buyers remains limited in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, heightening competition and seeing prices hit fresh peaks in each of these markets in September.”
Strong buyer competition is keeping auction clearance rates high this Spring. CoreLogic data shows 2,436 capital city homes were taken to auction last weekend, with a preliminary clearance rate of 71 percent recorded. This time last year, the clearance rate was 60.6 percent.
The PropTrak report shows that among the capital city markets, price growth over the past 12 months has been strongest in Perth. Home values have risen 9.24 percent to a record median of $597,000. Adelaide prices are up 8.31 percent to a record median of $689,000, and Sydney prices are up 6.86 percent to a median of $1.057 million.
In the regions, annual growth has been strongest in regional South Australia, where the median price has risen 9.86% to a new peak median of $399,000. Regional Queensland prices are up 4.89 percent to a record $614,000, while regional Western Australia prices have risen 3.29 percent to $460,000. Ms Creagh said prices will continue rising, with the key drivers being record levels of net overseas migration, tight rental markets and an undersupply of housing.
“Looking ahead, interest rates have likely peaked and population growth is rebounding strongly,” she said. “Together with a shortage of new home builds, prices are expected to rise.”
The Federal Government is projecting a net increase of 715,000 migrants over the next two years at a time when Australia already has a housing deficit. The National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation estimates a shortfall of 106,300 homes over the next five years.
In the rental market, Domain chief of research and economics, Dr Nicola Powell said Australia needs 40,000 to 70,000 extra rentals to meet current demand and balance the market.
“That is like adding all of the dwellings in the LGA of Newcastle into the market,” she said.
Domain’s latest Rent Report reveals a record-breaking 10 consecutive quarters of growth in weekly house rents and nine consecutive quarters of growth in weekly apartment rents. CoreLogic data shows the pace of rental price growth is slowing in 2023 but it is still very difficult for tenants to find a rental, with the national vacancy rate now sitting at a record low of 1.1 percent.
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.
The Republican nominee says it would help bring down home prices, though these buyers account for a fraction of U.S. home sales
Former President Donald Trump said he would ban undocumented immigrants from obtaining home mortgages, a move he indicated would help ease home prices even though these buyers account for a tiny fraction of U.S. home sales.
Home loans to undocumented people living in the U.S. are legal but they aren’t especially common. Between 5,000 and 6,000 mortgages of this kind were issued last year, according to estimates from researchers at the Urban Institute in Washington.
Overall, lenders issued more than 3.4 million mortgages to all home purchasers in 2023, federal government data show.
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, made his comments Thursday during a policy speech to the Economic Club of New York in Manhattan.
Housing remains a top economic issue for voters during this presidential election. Rent and home prices grew at historic rates during the pandemic and mortgage rates climbed to levels not seen in more than two decades. A July Wall Street Journal poll showed that voters rank housing as their second-biggest inflation concern after groceries.
Both major candidates for the 2024 presidential election have made appeals to voters on housing during recent campaign stops, though the issue has so far featured more prominently in Vice President Kamala Harris ’s campaign.
Trump has blamed immigrants for many of the nation’s woes, including crime and unemployment. Now, he is pointing to immigrants as a cause of the nation’s housing-affordability crisis. Yet some affordable-housing advocates and real-estate professionals said Trump’s mortgage proposal would fail to bring relief to priced-out home buyers.
“It’s unfortunate that given the significant housing affordability crisis that is widely acknowledged across most partisan lines, we are arguing about a minuscule segment of the market,” said David Dworkin, president of the National Housing Conference, an affordable-housing advocacy group.
Gary Acosta, chief executive of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, a trade organization, said, “It’s just another effort to vilify immigrants and to continue to scapegoat them for any issues that we have here in the United States.”
A Trump campaign spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Undocumented immigrants in the U.S. can obtain an obscure type of mortgage designed for taxpayers without Social Security numbers, most of whom are Hispanic. The passage of the USA Patriot Act of 2001 allowed banks to use identification numbers from the Internal Revenue Service as an alternative to Social Security, extending a number of financial services to people without legal status for the first time.
Mortgage loans for undocumented immigrants are typically higher interest and borrowers include legal residents who have undocumented spouses, Acosta said. Lenders include regional credit unions and community-development financial institutions.
In his speech, Trump said that “the flood” of undocumented immigrants is driving up housing costs. “That’s why my plan will ban mortgages for illegal aliens,” he said.
Trump didn’t elaborate on how he would enact a ban on such loans.
Though mortgages for undocumented people living in the U.S. are relatively rare, residential real-estate purchases by foreign nationals are big business , especially in expensive coastal cities such as New York and Los Angeles. These sales have declined in recent years, however.
Close to half of foreign purchases are made by people residing abroad, while the other half are made by recent immigrants or residents on nonimmigrant visas, according to an annual survey by the National Association of Realtors. Many affluent foreigners buy U.S. homes with cash instead of obtaining mortgage financing.
In his Thursday speech, which focused mostly on other economic matters such as energy and taxation, Trump proposed other measures to bring down housing costs, including cutting regulations for builders and allowing more building on federal land. Similar ideas appeared in the housing policy outline Harris released in August .
The former president has spoken on housing-related issues in speeches at other recent campaign stops, including in Michigan last month, where he touted his administration’s 2020 overturn of a policy that had encouraged cities to reduce racial segregation .
“I keep the suburbs safe,” Trump said. “I stopped low-income towers from rising right alongside of their house. And I’m keeping the illegal aliens away from the suburbs.”
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.