WA housing market recovering, led by coastal suburbs: REIWA
Strong rises in values of coastal Perth suburbs have led a resurgent WA housing market, according to the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia.
REIWA president David Airey says the WA market is showing the first real indications of a recovery in 18 months.
According to REIWA data, the strongest-performing suburb over the December quarter was North Beach, 16 kilometres north of the Perth CBD, where house prices are up 15.3% for the quarter to a median of $980,000. North Beach turned around a 5.8% annual decline recorded over the September quarter 2011 to end the year with median house prices up 10.1%.
The rise in the North Beach median price was more than double that of the 7.3% increase in Rossmoyne on the Canning River to the south of the CBD, where the median house price has risen to $915,000. Rossmoyne prices were down 11.5% for the year to the September 2011 quarter.
Third on the list was Ocean Reef in the outer-northern suburbs, where prices increased by 4.5% to a median of $700,000 after registering a 6.2% annual decline over the September quarter.
Other coastal and riverside suburbs on the list of the top 10 suburbs for the December quarter were Salter Point, Jindalee and Bateman.
The best-performing suburb for the year was Marmion, close to North Beach, where prices rose 10.5% for the year to a median of $950,000.
Airey says suburbs like Marmion and North Beach have performed well because they are small, niche suburbs with limited properties for sale.
According to Airey, signs of a turnaround in the WA market include the increases in Perth house and unit prices over the December quarter (up 0.5% and 1% respectively); a 12% decline in the number of properties on the market; a 4% increase in residential property sales to 9,600; a decline in the number of selling days from 81 to 77 to 77and a decrease in the number of vendors discounting their properties to achieve a sale.
Despite the increase in sales over the quarter, annual dwelling sales for 2011 were the lowest in 20 years.
“The modest increase in Perth’s median house price is due to the growing numbers of up-grade buyers who entered the market, particularly in the $500,000 to $700,000 price range,” says Airey.
“This has countered the large sales volumes of first-home buyers purchasing the more affordable homes and skewing the median downwards in recent times.
“When you look at all the market indicators together to get a wider picture you can see that buyers and sellers are becoming more confident, and things really do look like they’re settling down into a more normal pattern,” he says.
According to the most recent RP Data-Rismark house price index, Perth was the worst-performing capital city property market, with home prices down 1.6% in December and 4.3% for the year.
Rismark managing director Ben Skilbeck says Perth was one of the more volatile housing markets in December.