National house price decline slows, PropTrack data reveals

The PropTrack House Index revealed a significant slowdown in the decline of house prices in September, a dip of only 0.19 per cent nationally — the smallest fall since April.

House prices continued to decline across the country last month, although the pace has begun to slow.

The PropTrack Home Price Index showed that national prices were down only 0.19 per cent, the smallest price fall since prices started to decline in April 2022.

PropTrack’s senior economist Paul Ryan said he doesn’t believe this heralds the end of price falls, as extreme interest rate increases will take some time to feed through the market.

“Perhaps it shows that the strength of demand means that the price falls won’t be as large as some months ago,” he said.

Mr Ryan said demand in terms of the number of buyers that he thinks are in the late stage parts of their buying journey has dropped off a little bit since the period of strong price growth last year.

House prices were still largely above pre-pandemic levels, with capital city prices up 25 per cent and regional areas almost 50 per cent higher since March 2020.

“We’ve got this situation where we’ve got lots of buyers, and they’ve got … quite a bit less to spend in terms of borrowing capacity, which is down by more than 20 per cent already at the start of the year,” he said.

“There were quite a few buyers that were sitting on the sidelines a couple months ago, and perhaps those buyers are coming into the market now.”

Capital cities continued to underperform compared to regional areas in September, although house prices still remained up more than 20 per cent since pre-pandemic levels.

Originally leading price falls across the country, Sydney and Melbourne saw prices ease, with further price falls expected in the coming months as higher interest rates place a strain on borrowing capacities.

However, Melbourne prices were sitting below their level a year ago for the first time since 2019 after falling 0.29 per cent in September, while Sydney prices fell 0.18 per cent and were 3.7 per cent below their September 2021 level.

Defying national price falls, regional areas in South Australia and Tasmania hit new price peaks in September.

The only capital city to not see a price decrease was Hobart, up 0.05 per cent and remained 1.8 per cent below its peak recorded in May 2022.

Prices were still 46 per cent above levels at the beginning of the pandemic in Hobart.

Adelaide was the strongest performing capital city market in the past year, down 16 per cent with regional South Australia the only stronger market across the nation.

For the second month in a row, Adelaide saw prices down by 0.16 per cent in September, and with typical houses around $700,000, smaller price falls are expected compared to other regions and cities.

Strong migration flows to South East Queensland led to annual growth rates of above 30 per cent in early 2022 for Brisbane, and house prices remained 45 per cent higher than in March 2020.

This resulted in only a slight price fall for Brisbane in September at 0.29 per cent, 2.2 per cent below the price peak recorded in April 2022.

Perth endured a price fall of 0.29 per cent as well, although price decreases have been much slower than other capital cities.

The largest decline among capital city markets was Darwin falling 0.37 per cent in September, with prices up less than 3 per cent in the past year.

The ACT recorded a small fall in September, but house prices have been falling persistently, now down 3 per cent from their peak in March.