Property prices have increased by 8.3% annually in Australia after rising for six straight months, data from property consultant CoreLogic has revealed.
A lack of supply is apparently fuelling house price growth, like in the UK, however it seems available housing stock is even more squeezed down under.
Australia now ranks at 22 out of 33 OECD countries when comes to providing housing.
On a month-on-month basis prices climbed by 0.8% in May, rising by A$12,000 (around £,6,250) in the process.
The state capitals of Perth and Adelaide saw significant increases in May, while Sydney prices matched their January 2022 peak.
Sydney’s median home value in is now just under A$1.16 million (£600,000).
Rachel Ong ViforJ, economics professor at Curtin University, told The Sydney Morning Herald: “New housing supply only adds to the existing housing stock a bit at a time, so it will take a long time for new housing supply to have any positive impact on affordability. The majority of our housing stock is made up of established dwellings,” she said.
“So while we can concern ourselves with building new houses, we should at the same time try to see how we can make better use of our established dwelling stock … providing greater incentives for ‘empty nesters’ to downsize if they have spare bedrooms, [and] dealing with the negative impacts of short-term rentals, [for example] Airbnb, on the supply of long-term rental stock.
“Of course, the usual supply-side solutions apply – unblocking capacity constraints in the sector, government building more social housing for low-income households, reforming the planning to better support delivery of a mix of new builds.”
