Australian Financial Times: Sydney Melbourne house prices hit a new high, Sydney house median price is more than a million Australian dollars mark
The Domain Group released its latest statistics on Thursday, with the median home prices in Sydney and Melbourne soaring to new highs in the last quarter.
The Domain Group said the main reason is Australia`s current very low interest rates, immigration competition and Sydney Melbourne`s booming economy.
Sydney`s median home price jumped 2.7 percent in September, according to the Domain Group`s house price report, and median prices have recovered or even exceeded their all-time highs.
The median price of a stand-alone house in Sydney is now $1068330.
The Domain Group is part of Fairfax, and Fairfax owns several major Australian newspapers and radio stations.
Melbourne`s house price growth even surpassed Sydney`s, to 3.1%, and 9.1% for the full year.
Melbourne`s median home price also rose to $773669.
Dr. Andrew Wilson, chief economist at Domain, said the Australian housing market now has two or even three different speeds.
Melbourne and Sydney are now leaders in the Australian housing market, while the rest of the big cities are second-tier, with Perth and Darwin, the mining booms behind it.
Sydney and Melbourne, Australia`s two major cities, are operating well and the housing market is very hot.
Recently, the Bank of Australia added a fire to the housing market, cutting official interest rates to 1.5%, the lowest in Australia`s history.
A report by Domain Group on Thursday also noted a decline in apartment prices in downtown Melbourne, despite previous reports.
But apartment prices across Melbourne rose 4.5% to a median $466779.
In Melbourne, apartment prices in Inner Ring and Central are on the rise, Dr. Andrew Wilson said.
The retired elders sold their big houses and moved back to apartments close to the inner ring of the city centre.
The prices of Docklands, Southbank and CBD apartments fell 4.5 percent and 1.9 percent for the year.
Sydney apartments rose 1.1% to $685,865 in the first quarter.
Dr. Andrew Wilson said the large number of apartments on the market did not solve the problem that first-time buyers could not afford to buy a house.
First-time buyers are hard to buy, he says, and the unaffordable problem is more than just a big supply.
We have a lot of apartments on the market now, but these developments are in the wrong place, and no one wants to buy them.
Federal City Secretary Angus Taylor says houses and apartments should be built on transport nodes across major cities.
This makes it easy for the citizens to get through, and they are willing to buy it.
The price of stand-alone homes in Brisbane fell 0.9% in the previous quarter to $521152.
Brisbane apartments fell 2.9% to $367,518.
Perth home prices also fell 2% in the previous quarter, dropping 3.8% to $56, 6609 for the year.
Perth house prices are now at their lowest level since 2013.
