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 March quarter of 2013, which reported a 0.1% increase in capital city house prices over the quarter. However, the result was strengthened by the fact that the December quarter’s result was revised-up. Had this revision not taken place, capital city house prices nationally would have risen by 0.5% over the quarter.
The below table and chart summarises the key movements:
Clearly, it’s a two speed market currently, dominated by the mining strongholds of Perth and Western Australia, as well as Sydney.
Turning now to the longer-term charts, you can clearly see the divergence in house price performance between the larger and smaller capitals:
House prices nationally are now -2.5% below peak in nominal terms, led by Hobart (-9.4%), Melbourne (-5.9%) and Brisbane (-5.6%). By contrast, Darwin (+9.9%) and Sydney (+0.6%) house prices are at new highs in nominal terms.
In real inflation-adjusted terms, prices remain -10.2% below peak, with all capitals except Darwin yet to regain their previous highs.
Overall, the ABS house price survey confirms that a modest house price recovery is underway, but that the strength of the recovery is highly varied across the major capital city markets.
