March 2021: How did Melbourne apartment values perform over February?
Apartments values in Melbourne jumped 1.2 per cent over February, according to CoreLogic's monthly Hedonic Home Value Index.
It was Melbourne's largest gain since late 2019.
The Victoria capital was one of the country's strongest performers, joint second with Sydney and Perth (both +1.2 per cent) and only behind Hobart whose unit values soared 2.3 per cent.
The jump in values in Melbourne follows 0.1 per cent gains in January and 0.6 per cent over December. That puts values 1.9 per cent up on the quarter, only second to Perth and Hobart (both up 3.2 per cent).
Melbourne's median apartment value now sits at $582,833, according to CoreLogic, up from last month's $577,206.
CoreLogic's head of research Tim Lawless says there are tentative signs the trend of the housing market performing considerably stronger than the unit market could become less obvious.
Lawless also noted that the weak rental conditions across Sydney and Melbourne unit markets looks to be turning.
"Melbourne unit rents edged higher in February after falling for nine of the previous 10 months", Lawless said.
"The improvement in unit rents across Australia's two largest cities is likely to be at least partially seasonal as demand from domestic students generally rises early in the year, but could also be attributable to more people returning to work in the inner cities as well as workers in some of the hardest hit industries such as hospitality, food and accomodation service returning to employment."
