The pace of growth in Australian housing values has continued to trend downwards since April last year, with February’s growth of 0.6% marking the lowest monthly growth reading since September 2020. February’s growth rate was down from 1.1% in January and a cyclical peak of 2.8% in March 2021.
CoreLogic’s national Home Value Index (HVI) showed that housing values are generally rising and the 0.6% gain in February was the 17th consecutive monthly increase in the national HVI.
Tim Lawless, CoreLogic’s director of research, said every capital and broad “rest of state” region is now recording a slowing trend in value growth, albeit with significant diversity.
“Sydney and Melbourne have shown the sharpest slowdown, with Sydney (-0.1%) posting the first decline in housing values since September 2020, while Melbourne housing values (0.0%) were unchanged over the month, following similar results in December (-0.1%) and January (+0.2%),” Lawless said. “Conditions are easing less noticeably across the smaller capitals, especially Brisbane, Adelaide, and Hobart, where housing values rose by more than 1% in February. Similarly, regional markets have been somewhat insulated to slowing growth conditions, with five of the six rest-of-state regions continuing to record monthly gains in excess of 1.2%.”
Nationally, home values were 20.6% higher over the past 12 months, down from what is likely to be the peak rate of annual growth recorded at 22.4% last month.
