From records to resilience: a year in property unlike any other
Successive interest rate rises, surging inflation, low consumer sentiment and deteriorating affordability drove a shift in Australia’s 2022 housing market performance, CoreLogic’s annual Best of the Best report reveals.
The seminal publication, which sums up the country’s annual property performance and provides an outlook for the year ahead, shows the diversity in market conditions across geographies, value segments and property types.
When summing up the year that was, CoreLogic Head of Research Eliza Owen highlighted two distinct characteristics of capital growth trends in 2022, with the first being that not all housing markets were uniformly impacted by market headwinds.
“More expensive markets tended to see sharper declines, while the more affordable segment of the market where buyers typically do not have to extend themselves as much to buy into, saw greater resilience to increases in interest rates,” she said.
“The second trend is the pace of decline has been slowing on a broad basis since September. While this may be seen as a positive by some, there is still risk of the decline re-accelerating in the year ahead.”
CoreLogic Economist, Kaytlin Ezzy, added a prominent theme was the Australian property market’s seismic shift in conditions in the space of 12 months.
“Last year's Best of the Best celebrated some of the strongest annual sales turnover and value growth on record. This year's report examines some of the most resilient markets as we move through one of Australia's fastest interest rate tightening cycles in history,” Ms Ezzy said.
Over the year to November, national housing values fell -3.2%, driven by an annual decline in capital city dwelling values of -5.2%, while regional dwelling values rose by 3.3% over the same period.
The estimated total value of residential real estate decreased from $9.6 trillion in December 2021 to $9.4 trillion in November 2022. Estimated annual sales declined -13.3% compared to the year to November 2021, with approximately 535,000 homes sold nationally.