The Australian housing market saw an overall rise of 8.1% across all markets and across the year of 2023. This marks a recovery from the 4.9% decline in 2022. However, this rise pales in comparison with the significant increase of 24.5% in 2021.
December saw a modest gain of 0.4%, with a high of 1.3% increase all the way back in May. It has been inferred that the rate increases, an increase in the number of housing stock, overall low sentiment, the pressures related to cost of living and affordability issues have helped bring back the positivity in the market.
Source: Corelogic
There has been a noted divergence in the rate of increase over the year with Perth rising over 15% and a fall of -1.6% across the regional market in Victoria. The rate of growth in Sydney and Melbourne in particular declined significantly since the rate hike in June with a growth of only 0.2% over the last couple of months of 2023. This shows a diversity across the various markets within the Australian housing market.
The regional markets have shown weaker growth over the course of the year with a 4.4% increase across all their markets, which is half of the overall capital cities markets at 9.3%.
Despite the increase in values of the majority of regions in 2023, Sydney remains -2.1% below its peak in early 2022, Canberra -6.3%, Melbourne -4.1% and Hobart -11.2%.