Australian Property Monitors (APM) has released its March quarter house and unit price results (below), which recorded a 2.0% increase in house prices over the quarter at the national capital city level, and a 1.3% rise in national capital city unit prices.
In the year to March 2014, APM recorded an 11.3% increase in national capital city house prices and an 8.3% rise in unit values.
Looking at the capital city breakdown, you can see that Sydney and Melbourne led house price growth, with prices jumping by 3.1% and 2.8% respectively over the quarter. Adelaide (+1.3%) and Brisbane (+0.9%) also experienced growth, whereas prices in Perth were flat. By contrast, values in Canberra (-2.6%), Hobart (-2.5%) and Darwin (-1.6%) fell in the March quarter:
It should be noted, however, that upward revisions to the prior quarter lowered this quarter’s price growth. As shown in the table below, the previously reported December median house price nationally was $597,556, suggesting unrevised growth of 2.8% – a very strong result. Melbourne’s median house price was revised up particularly strongly in the December quarter, without which growth would have been a whopping 6.2%!
Unit price performance was mixed, with Sydney (+2.6%) and Darwin (+2.1%) recording particularly strong growth over the quarter, whereas prices fell significantly in Hobart (-4.4%), Perth (-1.4%), and Adelaide (-1.2%):
However, unlike for houses, downward revisions to the December quarter release (see below) biased the result upwards, without which unit prices nationally would have risen by a more moderate 0.2%.
Despite the strong value growth overall, APM’s Andrew Wilson has played-down the result and claimed that there is “no boom”, seemingly in a rear-guard action to dissuade the RBA from raising interest rates:
Of course, as noted yesterday, Australian housing values are nearly back at their 2010 peak in real terms, which is an alarming situation in my view given the lacklustre economy and the upcoming unwind of the once-in-a-century mining investment and commodity price booms.
