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Staff Reporter
The past five years has been a quiet period for the housing market, with new data showing current sales are more than eight per cent below the five-year average.
According to new research conducted by RP Data, for the year to March 2013, there were 400,209 house and unit sales nationwide, which is 8.8 per cent fewer sales than the five-year average.
That said, some regions have more recently shown a substantial improvement against the average number of transactions.
RP Data’s Tim Lawless said that across the capital cities, Perth and Darwin were the only two areas where transaction numbers over the year to March 2013 were higher than their respective five-year averages.
In Perth, where market conditions were very soft prior to 2012, dwelling sales are now tracking 15.4 per cent higher than the five-year average; Perth house sales have jumped by 25 per cent over the past 12 months alone.
Darwin has also shown a significant increase in house sales over the past year, rising by just over 15 per cent to be almost two per cent higher than the five-year average number of sales.
Of the 60 council regions that saw an above-average number of sales over the year to March 2013, 37 were in Western Australia, 17 in New South Wales, three in the Northern Territory, two in South Australia and one in Queensland.
According to Mr Lawless, an interesting trend is emerging across those areas, where the number of sales is tracking significantly below the five-year average.
“There were 53 council areas across the country where the number of dwelling sales over the year to March 2013 was tracking more than 25 per cent lower than the five-year average. Nearly half of these regions were located in Victoria and almost 20 per cent were located in Tasmania. This highlights the relatively sedate housing market conditions in these states compared with their five-year average,” Mr Lawless said.
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