Weekly Real Estate Market Update with Leigh Martinuzzi
This week Australia ranked seventh out of 55 countries for the highest annual price growth, according to research provided by Knight Frank’s Global House Price Index. This was based on the annual property price increase to the end of June 2021, which in Australia was 16.4%. The figure as of today is closer to 18.5% nationally. If you think that is spectacular, have a look at prices in Turkey, up 29.2% and New Zealand ranked #2 with property prices up 25.9%.
We’ve seen new listings increase this week across the country with CoreLogic reporting new listings up 22.6% on this time last year. This is heavily skewed however by new listings in Melbourne reporting an almost 200% climb. Of course, this time last year Melbourne was in lockdown and consumer confidence was weakened. This year sellers seem more comfortable in selling despite lockdowns and tight restrictions.
Also, to note, is that the total number of listings in Melbourne is in the positive territory sitting at 16.3% above this time last year. All other capital cities, except for Darwin, are reporting total listing counts in the negative territory, anything from -15.5% in Perth to -37.6% in Canberra from this time 12 months ago. With buyer demand soaring last week, up by 7.5% according to REA, the supply versus demand equation remains very much uneven which is resulting in talks of a potential further 20% price hike in certain parts of Australia over the next 6 months.
This week we’ve seen a noticeable increase in enquiries from Victorian buyers looking to make a move. For example, last week we listed two new homes in Palmwoods, and we’ve seen approximately 15% to 20% of those buyers coming in from Victoria. Our feeling is that this number will spike even further as we head into Christmas and beyond.
In discussion with many locals, I’ve heard comments about just how quickly they are seeing properties sell. Twelve months ago, we saw properties selling at around 70 to 80 days however now in most areas of the coast SOLD stickers are going up much sooner. REA has suggested that in most suburbs the average sale time has as much as halved or more in 2021 sitting on average around 30 days in our local market. With buyer demand so strong this is to be expected. At MPG, our average time on the market for all sales this year is just 14 days.
As prices continue to climb, we have noticed that although listings are getting many views via the two most popular websites, Domain and REA, there are fewer call and email enquiries coming in. This is more noticeable with properties priced in high categories, i.e locally, $800,000 plus. This is not necessarily a bad thing, in our experience, many of these enquiries are genuine buyers who are ready to purchase. The decreasing bulk of enquiries may have something to do with the affordability of properties and also in part to do with limited ability for our southern buyers to be able to inspect or move with border restrictions and such.
November is a busy time for property sales however this year I think we will be kept busy over the festive season. While many agencies close their doors over the Christmas and New Year’s break I for one am getting ready for a busy selling season this Christmas.
Auction Results State by State. Week ending Sun 26 Sept.
- Queensland – =80% (158/1577)
- NSW – 92% (484/1832)
- Victoria – 87% (172/1182)
- ACT – 95% (61/43)
- South Australia – 94% (101/344)
- Tasmania – 100% (1/250)
- Western Australia – 100% (1/691)
- Northern Territory – 67 (3/34)
*(Auctions/Private Sales)
