House prices are now falling in every mainland capital city with Australia’s real estate downturn the worst on record.
Sydney’s house values have fallen by 14.6 per cent since peaking in July 2017, and was home to seven of Australia’s 10 worst performing metropolitan markets in February.
In just 19 months, median house prices in Australia’s biggest city have fallen by more than $160,000, even though interest rates are at a record low of 1.5 per cent.
House prices are now falling in every mainland capital city with Australia’s real estate downturn the worst on record (Sydney is pictured)
For the first time since the downturn began, monthly house prices are now dropping in every mainland capital city, with Canberra now joining the ranks, CoreLogic data showed.
CoreLogic’s head of research Tim Lawless said stricter lending rules since 2017 were now hurting housing markets beyond Sydney and Melbourne.
‘The fact that we are seeing weakening housing market conditions across regions where home values were previously rising at a sustainable pace, and economic conditions relatively healthy, is a sign that tighter credit conditions are having a broader dampening effect on buyer activity,’ he said.
Hobart is the only capital city market, so far, to have weathered the downturn sparked by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s crackdown on investor and interest-only loans.
Sydney’s house values have fallen by 14.6 per cent since peaking in July 2017, and was home to seven of Australia’s 10 worst performing metropolitan markets in February (Point Piper in Sydney is pictured)
Sydney’s median house price peaked at $1.05million in July 2017 but in the 19 months since then, it had fallen by $161,623 to $888,117, CoreLogic real estate data showed.
Detached home values have declined by 15.4 per cent, in median values terms, and by 14.6 per cent in overall value terms.
It far surpassed the 9.6 per cent drop in Sydney’s real estate values between 1989 and 1991, during a period that began with 18 per cent interest rates and ended with a recession.
During the past year alone, median house prices in the New South Wales capital have fallen by 11.5 per cent.
Melbourne (pictured) was also bleeding, with median house prices falling by 11.5 per cent to $729,392
Melbourne was also suffering, with median house prices falling by 11.5 per cent to $729,392, in the year to the end of February 2019.
The city’s inner-east was Australia’s worst performing suburban housing market in February, where prices dived by 15.1 per cent during the past year.
Ryde, in Sydney’s north, was the nation’s second worst housing market, with values diving by 14.8 per cent annually.
Sydney was home to seven of Australia’s 10 worst performing housing markets in February, with the inner south-west, Sutherland, Parramatta, south-west, inner-west and Baulkham Hills-Hawkesbury areas suffering double-digit downturns in one year.
Melbourne’s inner-south and outer-east also suffered double-digit falls over the same period.
In February, median house prices fell in Sydney (-1.1 per cent), Melbourne (-1.2 per cent), Brisbane (-0.3 per cent), Adelaide (-0.1 per cent), Perth (-1.4 per cent), Darwin (-1.3 per cent) and Canberra (-0.1 per cent), with Hobart the only capital city to post an increase, with values rising by 0.9 per cent.
The downturns in Australia’s biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne, followed five years of double-digit capital growth in the five years to 2017.
The Reserve Bank of Australia acknowledged last month that acknowledged in the minutes of its February board meeting that falling house prices would affect economic activity as consumption levels fell.
Hobart (pictured) was the only capital city market where median house prices didn’t go backwards in February