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Over 90 per cent of property resales made a profit over the March quarter of 2025, with the Adelaide market overtaking Sydney for the highest median nominal gain across the capital cities.
Cotality’s Pain & Gain Report for the March 2025 quarter revealed that 94.9 per cent of property sales delivered a profit, holding steady from the December 2024 quarter.
Despite totalling a gross resale profit of $31.7 billion, the report showed that the median nominal gain of the 86,363 properties sold over the March quarter slumped to $305,000.
The report said that the median nominal gain was down from $310,000 in the December 2024 quarter, marking the first quarter since March 2023 where gains have fallen.
Cotality’s head of research, Eliza Owen, said the recent February and May rate cuts have reignited demand and lifted housing values 1.3 per cent over the three months to May.
Owen said that profitability will rise over the next months due to the recent Reserve Bank of Australia rate cuts, which have already stoked demand and driven market activity nationwide.
“Although profitability held steady in early 2025, we’re seeing clear signs of renewed momentum.”
“With rate reductions now flowing through to buyer demand and value growth, we expect stronger resale returns in the months ahead,” Owen said.
Sellers also made slightly smaller losses over the March 2025 quarter, with the 5.1 per cent of unprofitable home sales returning a median loss of $44,000, as opposed to $45,000 in the previous quarter.
Total losses also notched down to $258 million over the first quarter of 2025, $40 million lower than the previous quarter and $12 million lower than the 2024 March quarter.
During the March quarter, Adelaide recorded the highest median dwellings nominal gain at $385,000 and registered the second highest profit-making sales (98.9 per cent) right after Brisbane at 99.7 per cent.
Cotality said that Adelaide overtook Sydney’s median profit of $368,000, unseating Sydney for the first time since August 2014.
Melbourne and Darwin registered profit-making sales of 88.7 per cent and 73.8 per cent respectively, and were the only cities to record a profit-making resales rate of less than 90 per cent in the March quarter.
While Darwin recorded the highest incidence of loss-making property resales (26.2 per cent), the market also registered the biggest improvement across the capital cities through improving its rate of loss by 240 basis points over the quarter.
Houses prevail as unit resales fall further behind
Cotality’s findings showed that house resales continued to outperform units over the March quarter, with 97.2 per cent of house sales proving profitable, as opposed to 90.1 per cent of units.
House resales also notched up a higher median gain than units did during the first quarter of 2025, with $355,000 for houses registering 73 per cent higher than the $205,000 gain for units.
Across the 86,363 property resales analysed over the March quarter, the report said that units accounted for more than half (62.6 per cent) of all loss-making sales.
Cotality said the report matched the downward trend in the unit sector over the decade to March 2025, with national housing values rising 80.2 per cent, more than double the 37.7 per cent gain in unit values.
Owen said that the persistent underperformance of the unit sector could be linked to multiple markets that have been weighed down by oversupply and weak growth.
“Several large apartment markets that saw a building boom in the late 2010s have yet to recover materially,” Owen said.
The national median hold period for resales came in at 8.8 years, which Cotality said was consistent with the long-term trend towards holding property for extended periods.
Owen also observed a small increase in short-term resales over the quarter, with properties held for two to four years making up the largest share (15.6 per cent) of transactions over the March quarter.
“These short-term sales may reflect fixed-term borrowers exiting during a rising interest rate environment.”
“This cohort had a higher rate of loss, which is unsurprising given the market downturn that followed rate hikes from 2022,” she concluded.
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