The last of the major house price data providers, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), today released their capital city house price indices for the December quarter 2011.
The price index for established houses for the weighted average of the eight capital cities decreased -1.0% in the December quarter, with Melbourne (-1.6%), Adelaide (-1.6%), Darwin (-1.4%), and Brisbane (-1.3%) leading the falls. There was also 1.2% of downward revisions to the prior quarters.
The below table and chart summarises the key movements:
Cumulative house price losses are also accumulating, with national capital city house prices down -5.5% (-9.3% real) from peak, with Brisbane (-8.2% nominal; -12.2% real) and Perth (-7.6% nominal; -14.6% real) leading the way:
Note: Perth’s real house prices peaked way back in March 2007 and have, therefore, been deflating for nearly five years!
Turning now to the longer-term charts, you can clearly see the divergence in house price performance between the larger and smaller capitals:
And for completeness, below are the same charts presented in real (inflation-adjusted) terms:
It’s probably not worth reading too much into this ABS release given that the private sector data providers, Australian Property Monitors and RPData-Rismark, have already reported for December. The private sector data provider’s releases are also more relevant than the ABS given that they cover a larger sample of dwellings – i.e. units and apartments and regional homes – compared with the ABS, which only monitors detached housing in capital cities. Just why the ABS doesn’t upgrade its data set to provide an objective public benchmark I don’t know.
