ABS data shows ‘lucky’ buyers made $55K as market turned
Barely 10,000 people bought a house in the depths of Melbourne’s property market correction last year. But the ABS has revealed those who bought an average pad were $55K ahead by Christmas.
Just 10,000 Melbourne homes were sold in the depths of the city’s market correction early last year.
But the gutsy homebuyers who pushed ahead as house prices tumbled were already $55,000 ahead by the end of 2019 thanks to their “very lucky” purchases.
New figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics today reveal while the city’s median house price bottomed out at $685,000 in the March quarter last year, it had leapt 8 per cent to $740,000 by the end of December.
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Only 10,243 people bought a house in the final three months of 2019, which, while still subject to revision, is the lowest number of house sales recorded in a quarter since the ABS began tracking the numbers in 2002.
In the December quarter of 2017 the figure was almost 16,000.
While lagging the present market by three months, the data shows that by New Year’s Eve the city’s median house price was just $10,000 short of returning to a $750,000 market peak recorded by the ABS in December 2017.
Real Estate Institute of Victoria vice president Adam Docking said the market correction was widely believed to have ended with the federal election in May last year.
Mr Docking said those buying before the end of March last year had been “very lucky”, though they didn’t know it at the time.
“We weren’t seeing any speculative buyers when the market was at the bottom at all,” he said.
“You always buy hoping it is going to improve, whether that is short term or long term. But this was just luck.”
Mr Docking expected homeowners’ luck to continue despite COVID-19, with the city’s property market traditionally performing well when the stock market struggled.
Homeowners could also take heart from the nation’s historic approach to boosting the economy, with measures often aimed at boosting confidence among homeowners and buyers, he said.
The ABS Residential Property Price Index, which covers home values, not just the median price from properties sold in the quarter, rose a hefty 5.2 per cent in the final three months of 2019.
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More recent figures from real estate data service CoreLogic indicate Melbourne’s property market achieved a nominal recovery earlier this month.
Originally published as ABS data shows ‘lucky’ buyers made $55K as market turned