Property markets continued the busy start to 2022 in February, marking the fastest start to the year for new listings in capital cities since 2014.
This was according to REA Group’s PropTrack Listings Report for March 2022, a monthly report that analyses new trends and listings on realestate.com.au to provide the most up-to-date view on property market supply trends.
The total stock of properties listed for sale jumped 11.3% month-on-month in February – the largest increase nationally since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The uplift was driven by new-for-sale listings nationally, which saw a 27.3% surge month over month in February, and a 13.5% jump since February 2021.
“Across the capital cities, January and February saw the busiest start to a year since 2014,” said Angus Moore, PropTrack economist and report author. “New listings in capital cities were up 27.8% compared to January. This brought total stock of properties for sale up and was the biggest monthly increase nationally since the pandemic began.”
Canberra saw the biggest increase in new listings month over month (44%), followed by Melbourne, (38.7%), Sydney (37.3%), Darwin (27.2%), Hobart (20.6%) Brisbane (17.4%), and Adelaide (16.7%). New listing also picked up regionally with buyers in regional Tasmania and regional SA seeing the biggest year-over-year increases, at 26.5% and 24.5%, respectively.
Moore said that selling conditions will likely remain strong over the next few months as Australia heads into the typically busier Autumn selling season, but warned about some headwinds further out.
“Measures of buyer demand remain strong but do look to be easing from the exceptional levels seen in late 2021,” he said. “At the same time, the record levels of new supply coming to market in the final months of the year and the busy start to 2022 has helped give buyers more choice and ease how competitive the market has been. Interest rates look likely to rise later this year or early next year, which may start to cool buyer appetite. These factors mean that, while selling conditions look set to remain strong, we are likely to see some tempering from the dominant levels experienced in late 2021.”
