Find out the regions where the biggest difference has been made…
Buyer choice has improved in Australia’s property market as the number of homes listed for sale begins to climb.
Citing data from PropTrack, The Australian reported that 13 suburbs across the country saw their property listings double in number. The majority of these places were in regional Australia, while only two were in capital cities.
Among regional areas, suburbs where the number of listings grew the most included Southside, Gympie (up 121%) and Suffolk, a town south of Byron Bay (up 132%). Meanwhile, among capital cities, the number of homes listed for sale doubled in the southern Perth suburb of Karnup (up 121%) and Berkeley Vale on the central coast of NSW (up 101%).
“Even though prices have declined in the market more broadly, there are definitely certain areas that have been immune,” PropTrack economist Anne Flaherty told The Australian. “Outer areas are an example of that. They still tend to be a little bit more affordable, which means that buyers don’t have to borrow as much.”
In Melbourne, the biggest improvement to buyer choice was in Deanside (up 84%) and Thornbury (up 50%), while Brisbane suburbs Chapel Hill and Graceville increased 42% each.
Affordability still an issue
While the number of properties on offer remains below the level of choice available to buyers before the pandemic, conditions have at least eased compared to last year due to homes taking longer to sell, reported The Australian.
What has tempered demand is the RBA’s consecutive interest rate hikes. As the ANZ-CoreLogic Affordability Report revealed, new mortgage holders are now allotting 43.3% of their income to repayments, up by almost nine percentage points from last year.
“One of the key reasons sales volumes have fallen off nationally is a lot of buyers would be deterred by the cost of mortgage serviceability, when price falls haven’t been enough to offset the rising cost of debt,” CoreLogic research head Eliza Owen told The Australian.
