The bounce in home prices
From their high in April to their low last month national average home prices have fallen 9.1% making it their biggest fall in CoreLogic records going back to 1980. Capital city average prices were down 9.7% which is their second biggest fall, after the 10.2% fall in 2017-19. However, average price falls had slowed to a crawl and CoreLogic data shows that this has morphed into price gains across several cities so far in March with Sydney prices tracking up 1.1% at a monthly rate and five capital city average prices tracking up 0.6%. See the next chart. If home prices have bottomed this would leave them short of our expectation for a 15-20% top to bottom fall. So are property prices doing it again? – falling less than expected and then rising more than expected. This note looks at the positives and negatives for the residential property market outlook.