In something of a rare event, Australia is going through a fall in property prices across all of its capital cities.
What started as some selective weakness has now spread across the board with the Sydney market falling 4.7% in the last quarter, while the Melbourne market fell 3.3% as well.
The other capitals are later at coming to the party but they have all fallen too, marking a quite rare uniform drop—the biggest quarterly fall for the big capitals in four years.
Market Decisively Turned
With unit prices also down, it is clear that after years of resilience and stellar annual gains, the property market has now turned decisively.
It is not hard to search for reasons for the downturn.
Housing affordability is in the toilet, interest rates are high and probably heading higher, unemployment is heading up along with the cost-of-living courtesy of our fast-spending governments, and stubbornly high fuel prices which are ratcheting up many other prices as well.
Getting finance has also tightened up considerably, so even those who want to use this rare break in what has been a steadily rising market for many years are often struggling to get loan approval.
