According to SQM Research:
…the rises were not even across all the capital cities. Indeed, only two cities recorded asking price rises for houses – Sydney and Darwin, whilst all other cities recorded decreases.
Vendors have also been recorded to have increased asking prices for units across most capital cities, with large rises in Sydney (+3.4%), Perth (+2.3%) and Hobart (+4.8%).
Canberra is one market where it is clear market conditions remain weak. Vendors reduced their asking prices by 3.8% for houses and 1.3% for units.
Given the index’s strong correlation to the quarterly Australian Bureau of statics House price index, it is likely that the ABS will report a rise of between 1.0% to 1.6% for the March quarter for the national capital city average, with probable strong readings for Sydney and Darwin.
Louis Christopher from SQM Research says “Overall the market was confident for the quarter however I note that there was a little more caution in the month of March. Melbourne is still recording some weakness and that goes with Canberra as well, which is most likely been affected by cuts in the Federal budget. Sydney and Darwin are leading the charge. However if it were not for the strong results in Sydney, it is most likely the national average would be recording market weakness for the quarter.”
The methodology behind the Vendor Sentiment index is available here. It’s worth noting that the Vendor Sentiment index has been built to provide a leading indicator of the official ABS house price index (and presumably also the APM series, since it uses a similar stratified median methodology to the ABS). According to SQM, the index had a 98% correlation with the ABS series as at December 2012 (see below chart) which, as noted by Louis Christopher above, suggests that the ABS will record solid but not spectacular house price growth for the March quarter at the 8-city level.
