Tight housing stock has muted falls in home values, but experts warn the end isn’t in sight for declines this year.
CoreLogic’s Home Value Index released on Wednesday shows a decline of 0.14 per cent over February, marking the smallest monthly fall since rate hikes commenced in May 2022.
Nationally, housing prices are -9.1 per cent from their peak in April 2022, but are still higher than they were at the onset of the pandemic.
CoreLogic research director Tim Lawless said the stabilisation in housing values over the month coincides with consistently low advertised supply levels and a rise in auction clearance rates.
The past four weeks have seen the flow of new capital city listings tracking 17 per cent lower than a year ago, and 11.9 per cent below the previous five-year average.
“This trend towards a below-average flow of new listings has been evident since September last year, coinciding with a loss of momentum in the rate of value decline,” Mr Lawless said.
But the reprieve could be short lived.
CoreLogic head of research Eliza Owen told TND home prices could re-accelerate this year, but this largely depends on what happens with interest rates.
“At the moment, three of the four major banks are anticipating a further increase to the underlying cash rate of 75 basis points,” she said.
“So from that perspective, it seems almost inevitable that we would see this re-acceleration of the housing market decline.”
On the other hand, increased international migration could put more pressure on Australia’s limited housing stock and potential moves by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) to increase borrowing capacity could slow the decline of home prices, and even help push them up.
Prices rebound in Sydney
February saw New South Wales’ capital city score its first increase in home values since January 2022.
With a rise of 0.3 per cent, Sydney was also the only capital city to have home values hike over the month.
This comes as the Sydney market is faced with low stock levels, and previous falls in home values had lured buyers back into the market, Ms Owen said.
“At the median home value level, dwelling values across Sydney have fallen about $160,000 since their peak in January last year,” she said.
“The median home value is still over a million dollars, but it’s sitting below the sort of highs of [$1.2 million) that we saw earlier in the cycle, so that might be incentivising people to come back in.
“There would be a little bit of seasonality to this result as well, with home sales being a little bit stronger through February. But even so, I think it’s just an unusual window of opportunity that buyers have taken up, in what could be a longer housing market downturn to come.”
Regional decline
CoreLogic data shows regional dwelling values were down 0.3 per cent in February, compared with a 0.1 per cent fall across the combined capital cities.
However, Sydney’s small price hike, rather than a larger fall in regional market values, contributed to the stronger capital cities’ result.
Each of the broad rest-of-state regions apart from NSW recorded a monthly outcome that was in-line or stronger compared to their capital city counterparts.
Regional housing values remain 30.7 per cent above pre-pandemic levels, while the combined capitals index is 10.4 per cent higher.
Melbourne has the smallest value buffer, sitting at just 0.03 per cent above March 2020 levels, while regional South Australia values are 47.6 per cent higher.
