House price hope

By Chris Thomson | posted on October 25, 2018

URBAN Albany recorded a massive $90,000 rise in its median house price in the past three months, even though not one more house was sold than in the previous quarter.

Real Estate Industry Association of Western Australia President Damian Collins has told The Weekender that prices rose more in urban Albany during the September quarter than in any other of Western Australia’s largest regional centres.

“Albany was the top performing regional centre during the quarter, with its median lifting from $339,000 to $430,000 – a 26.8 per cent increase,” he said.

“It also experienced an improvement on an annual basis, with its median price now 17.5 per cent higher than last year’s September quarter median.”

The next highest quarterly price rise was in urban Busselton, which recorded a hike of 9.8 per cent, well below that of Albany.

But Mr Collins warned readers against taking action on the back of a single quarter’s stats, with Albany’s remarkable performance coming even though the volume of sales across the City was static – at 69 both this quarter and last.

“There was a shift in the composition of sales in Albany during the September 2018 quarter, with significantly more activity occurring above $350,000 than there previously has been, and fewer sales occurring below $350,000, which is where the bulk of activity has typically occurred in this region,” he said.

“I would just be cautious, because with median prices sometimes what you can see, if there’s a lot of sales at the higher end, that could mean that the median price rockets up.

“But look, even over the year, the trend is 17 per cent up, so there’s certainly signs that the [Albany] market is improving albeit on low volume numbers.”

In good news for sellers, it took 93 days on average to sell an Albany house in the September quarter, compared to 111 days the quarter before.

“Compared to the rest of regional WA, that’s pretty standard,” Mr Collins reflected.

“So, it’s still not like they’re coming on to the market and getting snapped up.

“It’s more at this stage a shift in composition of the prices of properties that are selling.”

Across the state, the overall regional median increased 7.8 per cent to $345,000 and overall sales were up 1.2 per cent.

“I think there’s an overall improvement in the level of confidence across the Western Australian market,” Mr Collins said.

“The mining sector is back to rehiring.

“It varies between regions the extent to which mining influences the economy, but in terms of the overall WA economy and confidence it has a big impact that eventually filters through to all regions to varying degrees.”

The REIWA analysis was for detached dwellings only, in urban areas of the state’s 11 largest centres, excluding Carnarvon, where there were not enough sales to extract meaningful data.