Smaller Cities Continue to Outperform

Australia’s smaller capital cities have outperformed the larger markets of Sydney and Melbourne in the past 12 months.

New data from PropTrack shows that Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, Hobart and Darwin all achieved higher median price growth than the two big southern capitals.

In the past 12 months Perth had the highest dwelling price growth of 20.6%, followed by Darwin, 17.6%, Brisbane, 16.4% and Adelaide, 13.4%. Sydney only increased by 2.3% and Melbourne by 0.3%.

PropTrack senior economist Angus Moore says there are signs in the past month that the pace of price growth is slowing.

Over the month of May, Sydney and Melbourne dwelling values fell by 0.2%, the ACT is down 0.4% and Perth is down 0.1%.

Cotality data shows similar patterns. Research director Tim Lawless says the housing cycle is weakening across most markets.

 “We are continuing to see multispeed conditions across Australia’s housing sector, with Perth and Melbourne at opposite ends of the spectrum,” he says.

“While the speed of value change remains very different from city to city, the direction is becoming more consistent, with most markets losing momentum as demand-side headwinds intensify.”

Lawless says the more affordable end of the market continues to show stronger or more resilient conditions than the higher-priced markets across most of the capitals.

Although he says that the pace of growth is generally easing across the more affordable markets as well.