Housing market sentiment improving but still favouring buyers

Larry SchlesingerDecember 7, 2020

Sentiment about the housing market is improving but still favours buyers over sellers.

Four out of five (80%) of the 1,030 people surveyed by RP Data and Nine Rewards about the outlook for the property market over the next six to twelve months, said now is a good time to buy.

This is up from 76% who said it was a good time to buy, when last surveyed six months ago.

Is now a good time to buy a property?

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Source: RP Data/Nine Rewards

Less than two-thirds (63%) of respondents said now was a good time to sell a property, down from 71% who said so six months ago.

“There has been a positive improvement in housing market conditions over the past six months, however the majority of those surveyed are still showing a low level of confidence about selling conditions,” says RP Data national research director Tim Lawless.

“As consumer confidence in housing market conditions rises, we are likely to see a larger number of dwelling sales as the year progresses.

“We have already seen buyer numbers rise from their early 2012 lows, and transactions over the past six months are about 4.3% higher than the same time a year ago,” he says.

The survey found an overall improvement in housing market sentiment with 41% of respondents expecting home values to rise over the next six months compared with just 33% of respondents back in October last year.

However, the majority of respondents (52%) expect the housing market to remain steady over the next half year, which may explain the caution about selling.

Only 7% are expecting dwelling values to fall.

Of those respondents who are expecting home values to rise over the next six months, their expectations of growth generally remain subdued. 86% of these individuals are expecting home values will rise by less than 5% over the next six months.

According to those respondents who think values will fall over the next six months, the largest proportion (38%) are expecting the fall to be less than 2.5% and 75% of respondents think values will fall by less than 5% over the coming half year.

“The May survey results revealed that there was a substantial upward shift in consumer expectations for housing market conditions over the past six months, however, this hasn’t changed a great deal since earlier this year when the February survey results were released.

“Based on the survey results, we’ve seen distinctive differences from region-to-region where as an example, 59% of respondents in Perth expected values to rise over the next six months, and 56% cent of respondents located in Sydney expect values to rise over the next half year.

“In contrast, survey participants in Tasmania delivered a much more sedate reaction with no local respondents expecting values to rise over the next six months,” he says.

Larry Schlesinger

Larry Schlesinger was a property writer at Property Observer

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