Where home prices rose and fell the most in every Australian capital city over the past year

David Scutt | Business Insider Australia | 10 May 2019

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/australia-house-prices-best-worst-performing-capital-city-2019-5

• Australia’s median home price slumped 7.2% in the year to April. An even larger 8.4% decline was recorded in the capital cities in average weighted terms.
• The price falls in some regional capital city markets were substantially larger than the national average. In others, prices didn’t fall at all.
• Fraser, in the ACT, recorded the largest median price increase over the year at 16.2%. East Arm, in Darwin, saw prices slump 25.1% in comparison.

While there’s a bit of chatter around that Australian home prices may bottom later this year, it’s been a tough 12 months nonetheless.

According to data released by CoreLogic, Australia’s median home price slumped 7.2% in the year to April, with an even larger 8.4% decline recorded in the capital cities in average weighted terms, largely reflecting 10%-plus falls in Sydney and Melbourne along with ongoing weakness in Perth and Darwin.

However, for some specific markets, the declines have been substantially larger, while in others prices haven’t actually fallen at all.

Here’s a couple of tables from CoreLogic underlining how diverse price changes have been across the country during the past 12 months.

The first shows where median values have fallen the most in percentage terms over this period by capital city SA2 region. There are 2,310 SA2 regions scattered across the country, according to the ABS. They usually contain a population of between 3,000 and 25,000, with the nationwide average being 10,000.

The largest price declines have all been seen in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Darwin, where city-wide median prices fell the most over the year compared to other capitals.

Demonstrating how Hobart valuations have managed to buck the trend, three of its five worst-performing regions actually saw prices increase over the year.

And for the largest price growth in the year, the Tasmanian capital, along with some individual suburbs in Canberra, also stood out among the rest. The five top performing regions in both cities logged gains of 7.9% from 12 months earlier.

While prices in some pockets of the smaller southern capitals boomed, three of the five top performing regions in Sydney and Melbourne, and four of five in Perth and Darwin, actually recorded price declines from a year earlier.

It will be interesting to see what the next 12 months will bring.