Sydney looks set to blow off as prices hit record highs: Pete Wargent

Pete WargentDecember 7, 2020

Just watching Sky News Business this morning - RP Data are set to report their house price indices for September and will show a rise of 1.6% across Australian capital cities for the month.

This will take Australian prices nationally to all-time record highs as some of us anticipated - to widespread derision, I might add - largely due to the ultra-low interest rate environment and a great swathe of investors hitting the major city markets.

Some of Australia's property markets remain soft, however.

Hobart is having a poor run with prices falling by 3% over the last quarter, while Adelaide's market has failed to record any gains over the past year, which is a poor show given an official cash rate of 2.50%. In Darwin's seasonal market, year on year price growth seems finally to have calmed a little (+2.2%  year on year).

Melbourne's market appears to remain very strong with prices zipping up again by a very significant 5% quarter on quarter including 2.4% in September alone; perhaps an even stronger showing over the past year than anyone could reasonably have guessed, in my view.

But it's the Sydney market that is really looking set to blow off thanks to its booming population growth and very tight supply of appropriate and desirable housing stock, as I've basically been carping on about for the last five years.

RP Data reported that Sydney prices increased by 2.5% in the month of September.

Source: RP Data

In truth, I don't know enough about 'what the wires do' with regards to RP Data's daily index, but although the stats imply that dwelling prices are continuing to move smoothly upwards from day to day, I wouldn't mind a bet that they can already anticipate Sydney prices moving materially higher over the coming months.

RP Data has Sydney dwelling prices up by more than 9.5% in 2013 and easily breaking record highs being up by close to 13% from their trough.

Certainly no interest cuts on that kind of data.

Source: RP Data


Pete Wargent
is the co-founder of AllenWargent property buyers (London, Sydney) and a best-selling author and blogger.

His new book 'Four Green Houses and a Red Hotel' was released on 1 September 2013.


Pete Wargent

Pete Wargent is the co-founder of BuyersBuyers.com.au, offering affordable homebuying assistance to all Australians, and a best-selling author and blogger.

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