National housing values hold steady

The latest Corelogic data shows that whilst property values in our metropolitan markets are holding reasonably steady, regional markets are now consistently out-performing the combined capital cities. 

Corelogic has released its monthly hedonic home value index which shows that property values nationally were largely unchanged in March, registering a slight a month-on-month fall of 0.2 per cent in capital cities and a rise of 0.4 per cent in regional markets.

Looking at the quarterly data, capital city prices were 0.9 per cent lower over the March quarter, whereas values across regional markets rose 1.1 per cent higher.

CoreLogic head of research Tim Lawless said, “The stronger combined regional markets performance continues a trend that began to emerge in October last year where regional housing markets  showed an overall improvement in the pace of capital gains while the combined capitals trend softened.”

The findings show that, of the capital cities, six out of eight recorded a fall in values over the first quarter of 2018. These ranged from a 1.8 per cent drop in Sydney to a 0.1 per cent fall in Darwin. Hobart performed strongly, recording a 1.7 per cent rise for the month of March and a 3.4 per cent lift for the quarter.

Interestingly, CoreLogic’s latest research also tell us that the apartment market is beginning to perform better than the housing market. Mr Lawless said: “the unit sector is now consistently outperforming the detached housing market - a trend which has been evident since mid-2017.”