Melbourne property prices fall 2%

黑山老妖

http://www.businessspectator.com ... -D84J7?OpenDocument

Melbourne's median house price has fallen two per cent in the first two months of 2008, as rising interest rates and sharemarket woes slow property market growth.

Real estate monitoring group Residex says the city's median house value has fallen to $469,000 after six months of interrupted growth that culminated in prices reaching a record high of $480,000 in December 2007.

"You can't have all the interest rate movements like we've had that quickly and a sharemarket that's crumbling like it is where there's not going to be some pressure on the housing market," Residex chief executive John Edwards told The Sunday Age.

According to Residex falling house prices were seen across all socio-economic areas, not just at the market's bottom end. House prices in Patterson Lakes fell by 1.6 per cent, in St Kilda by 1.45% and in North Melbourne by 1.38 per cent.

Some suburbs continued to perform well with house prices rising 2.6 per cent in Caulfield East, 2.59 per cent in Ashwood and 2.56 per cent in Malvern since February, despite the overall market slowing.

Separately the paper reports that Melbourne's clearance rate has dropped four percentage points on the pre-Easter weekend to 63 per cent.

The Real Estate Institute of Victoria said that the Melbourne property market was experiencing a "clear lessening" in demand for residential property and that further interest rate hikes could reduce demand even further, the paper reports.

"Clearance rates are likely to hover in the 60 per cent range for quite a few months yet, but that's on the basis that nothing further exacerbates the market, like even more interest rate hikes," REIV chief executive Enzo Raimondo said.

[ 本帖最后由 黑山老妖 于 2008-3-31 09:15 编辑 ]

北风

谢谢老妖情报
这几个月是蛮低迷的

黑山老妖

悉尼一样低迷．

北风

有没有租房市场的统计？

流浪的流氓

Some suburbs continued to perform well with house prices rising 2.6 per cent in Caulfield East, 2.59 per cent in Ashwood and 2.56 per cent in Malvern since February, despite the overall market slowing.

Mel近city的东南面真的是强劲啊。

Peggy

There will be a 50% increase in rental prices in metropolitan area across Australia.

knife

那已买房的是不是亏了?

newpoint

Eli Greenblat
March 20, 2008

MELBOURNE'S rental property drought has hit crisis levels after last month's vacancy rate fell below 1% for the first time on record. Rental accommodation in the central city has almost dwindled to zero.

Figures obtained by The Age reveal that the vacancy rate across Melbourne is 0.9%, a level not seen by the property industry since records began in the early 1980s.

For those wishing to live close to the city the situation is even more dire. The Real Estate Institute of Victoria says that, within four kilometres of the CBD, the vacancy rate dived to 0.5% last month. It was 0.6% in February last year.

"A rental vacancy rate below 1% is unprecedented," said REIV chief executive Enzo Raimondo, "and it increases the urgency for governments to take action to increase public and private investment in rental stock."

The surging demand for rental properties in Melbourne, particularly close to the city, is being fuelled by the state's growing population. About 1500 people are moving to Melbourne each week and experts predict that the city's population will hit 6.2 million by 2020, a decade earlier than forecast earlier. The State Government's Office of Housing has reported that median rents in metropolitan Melbourne rose 12.7% in the year to the September quarter.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics says there are 447,074 rental homes in Melbourne. A 0.9% vacancy rate means about 4020 properties are available to be let.

People scrambling for a home are offering higher rents or using family and social networks to gain a favourable result from landlords.

Real estate agents are reporting being swamped at open-for-inspections in the inner city and surrounding inner suburbs such as South Yarra and Fitzroy.

"We may get as many as 50 people or more coming in for an open for inspection, and from that we can expect to get more than 10 applications for the one property," said Karetta Farmer from Dingle Partners.

"The tenants are staying in touch with agents, adding their names to lists so they don't miss any opportunities."

Chris O'Shaughnessy, a director at Biggin & Scott, said many tenants were turning up at inspections with their application forms filled in. "In our existing portfolio of (roughly 1400) rental properties our vacancy rate would be next to zero … and the only reasons why places are vacant is that they have far too high rent or the property itself is pretty rough."

Vacancy rates in middle and outer Melbourne suburbs have fallen to 1%. In regional Victoria, Ballarat has a vacancy rate of 1.1%, down from 4% in February last year, and rates are as low as 1.2% in East Gippsland and 1.6% in Geelong.

Alan Moran, director of the Institute of Public Affairs' deregulation unit, said housing supply was being constrained by some action groups.

"It comes back to save-our-suburb type groups that are opposing new developments and either imposing costs on them or stopping them, so we have a shortage emerging.

"The Government has to give developers a greater certainty that if they conform to residential codes, (developments) will go through, and they have to prevent delaying tactics which we are so frequently seeing."

Robert Papaleo, director of strategic research at property group Charter Keck Cramer, said low vacancy rates would be the norm for a few years at least.

"There will be a lag between policy initiatives by governments and supply in the market in appreciable numbers, so we are starting from a fair way back to tackle this problem," he said.

from:http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/03/19/1205602482946.html

newpoint

个人感觉目前的房市低迷是暂时的，应该是入市的好时候，我正在看bentleigh的房子，打算买个自己住的。