Housing sales falling across Australia

Property prices may be scaring Aussies away, with data from CoreLogic showing only two capital cities seeing growth in property sales over the last 12 months.

In Sydney, annual sales volumes were recorded as 0.9 per cent lower and Melbourne also saw a drop of 7.6 per cent in annual sales.

In fact, the only capital cities that saw turnover growth over the past 12 months were Hobart by 10.9 per cent and Darwin by 10.7 per cent.

Cameron Kusher from CoreLogic is optimistic however, believing that “although transactions are lower over the year across the combined capital cities the number of sales is beginning to stabilise”.

Monthly settled dwelling sales and 6-month average, National

Source: CoreLogic

The six-month average (above) shows that the number of dwelling sales are beginning to trend higher.

However, when you look historically, there is a noticeable difference between peak sales in July 2003 to today. This is concerning when you consider that our population is now 4.7 million people higher.

Cameron Kusher attributed this to a few factors, including “the impost of stamp duty which discourages transactions, higher prices which lead to greater commission on sales and no real incentives for people to downsize homes when their children leave or they reach retirement”.

“These inefficiencies also have an economic impact as the high cost of exiting and entering the housing market is also likely to impact on labour mobility.

“Home owners may choose not to move for employment because of these high costs. 

“These are some of the reasons why state governments may consider moving away from transactional taxes such as stamp duty and towards a broader based land tax on all properties,” concluded Mr Kusher.

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