Sale Listings Surge in Sydney
By Louis Christopher on 9 Oct 2015
No Comments yet, your thoughts are very welcome
SQM Research reports that Sydney residential property listings rose 7.6% during the month of September to stand at 23,533 listings. Year on year, Sydney listings have risen 11.1%, suggesting that there are now more residential property sellers in the market than a year ago.
Nationally, the number of listed properties climbed to 339,026 in September 2015, increasing 1.4% from August 2015, with the number of sale listings remaining largely unchanged to this time last year. A monthly rise in sale listings for September was expected due to the normal spring seasonality historically recorded at this time of year.
Within the last 12 months sale listings for Darwin and to a lesser extent Perth have recorded high yearly growth. Darwin experienced a yearly growth of 22.1%, with sale listings climbing from 1,719 to 2,081. Sale listings in Perth increased from 20,401 this time last year to 23,232 in August 2015, a total yearly growth of 16.3%.
In contrast, year-on-year results indicate that Melbourne and to a lesser extent Hobart experienced excessive yearly falls. Melbourne recorded the biggest yearly change, with listings falling by 16.9%, reducing the number of properties for sale to 35,760. Hobart also recorded yearly falls with records indicating a yearly change of 9.9%.
The Sydney surge in listings is another indicator now suggesting that the Sydney housing market is now slowing. Buyers should now find there is a little more choice out there compared to earlier this year. Yet, I note that asking prices are still higher. I suspect vendors are not quite registering that conditions have changed somewhat since the white hot market of autumn.
The Melbourne result is also interesting in that there was barely any movement at all in listings in September and that stock for sale is well down on this time last year. This is suggestive of a strong housing market that is not slowing down at all.
While listings in Sydney surged, asking prices for Sydney dwellings continued to climb over September, with a total monthly rise of 1.6% for houses and 0.9% for units. The median asking price for a unit has now reached $636,100, while the median house asking price in Sydney is $1,143,300, according to SQM Research.
In contrast, median asking house prices in Canberra recorded yearly falls with a year-on-year comparison showing a 12 month decline of 2.5% for houses, and 0.3% for units. Perth median asking prices continue to record yearly falls, in particular asking prices for houses are down 5.3% over the last 12 months, and 1.7% for units.
Key Points
- Total online national residential listings climbed during September 2015 to 339,026.
- This figure represents a rise of 1.4% when compared to the corresponding period of the previous month (August 2015).
- Sydney recorded the largest monthly fall in stock levels, rising by 7.6% during September 2015 to 23,533.
- Melbourne recorded the biggest yearly change, with listings falling by 16.9%, reducing the number of properties for sale to 35,760.
- Sydney median house asking prices continue to rise during September 2015, with the current asking price for a house sitting at $1,143,300.
- Melbourne recorded the smallest monthly change, with listings up 0.8% over the month of September 2015.
