RP Data has today released its weekly Property Pulse (below), which provides a summary of the week’s key property-related data, as well as special report on property transaction volumes, which are starting to lift off last year’s lows:
For the year to March 2013, rpdata estimated that 400,209 house and unit sales occurred nationally which is 2.3 per cent more sales than over the same period a year ago. However, this is 8.8 per cent fewer sales compared with the five year average.
According to Mr Lawless, dwelling sales based on trend, have been rising since the housing market bottomed out in May last year.
“In fact, the number of house and unit sales transacted over the March quarter was the highest recorded since the three months ending November 2011,” Mr Lawless said.
Across the capital cities, Perth and Darwin were the only two areas where transaction numbers over the year to March 2013 were higher than their respective five-year average number of sales.
In Perth, where market conditions were previously very soft prior to 2012, dwelling sales are now tracking 15.4 per cent higher than the five-year average; Perth house sales jumped by 25 per cent over the past twelve months alone.
Darwin has also shown a significant increase in house sales over the past year, rising by just over 15 per cent to be almost 2 per cent higher than the five-year average number of sales.
The capital cities where transactions are the lowest relative to their five-year average sales rate are Hobart (-17.1%), Canberra (-17.0%) and Melbourne (-15.0%).
“A relatively soft level of buyer demand is demonstrated by the Source: rpdata fact that the number of house and unit sales was lower over the year to March 2013 across each of these cities compared with the previous twelve months,” Mr Lawless said.
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
