House prices have hit record highs – is this another property boom?

Australian median house prices have hit record highs new in every capital city bar Darwin and Perth.

According to Domain’s House Price Report for the December quarter latest median house price in Sydney now sits at $1.21 million.

Melbourne’s property prices have staged a massive comeback, rising 5.3 per cent in the last three months of 2020, and now they not only surpass pre-pandemic levels but have set new peak prices for both house and units.

The pieces to the property puzzle are falling into place and our property markets are on the move and will perform strongly in 2021.

Clearly our property market’s performance has been a far cry from all those Doomsday predictions of early last year.

Last October in my regular blogs on this site I announced that Australia’s property markets had turned the corner after being put on pause by the coronavirus induced lockdowns which caused “the recession we made us have.”

But now it’s official, the strong activity our team at Metropole saw on the ground last year has come through in the latest stats.

In fact, some commentators are even calling it a “Boom”, with property values rising as more Australians are looking for a new home or to upgrade their homes at a time when there are fewer properties on the market.

Melbourne unit median prices leapt by 4.4 per cent overall to a median of $569,677 — $14,000 higher than the record set in 2019, according to Domain’s House Price Report.

The boost in property prices had obviously been helped by record low interest rates, government grants and incentives for home buyers, as well as increasing consumer confidence that we have this “virus thing” under control.

This increase in consumer confidence shows up in various surveys suggesting Australian’s now believe it is the best time in many decades to purchase Real Estate including the following from Finder.com.au:-

At the same time housing finance approvals have been rising strongly meaning that there are more buyers in the market at the moment at a time when there fewer listings, which saw more competition push prices higher.

As always…price growth is not even

Remember there are markets within markets – each state has multiple markets based on geography, price point, and type of dwelling.

A great example of this are the following 2 tables The following chart from Domain shows not all regions in Melbourne performed the same.

And of course even within the same regions some properties types of property will outperform others.

There is nothing new here, but it’s a good reminder that careful property selection is critical for investment success.

Melbourne regions – median house price