Covid ‘to blame’ for huge home prices rises

PHOTO: Sydney home price growth is double what it would have been without Covid-19, a study has found. Picture: Newscorp Sunday Telegraph / Gaye Gerard Source: News Corp Australia

Covid-19 has pushed Aussie home price growth as much as 150 per cent higher than would have been the case without a pandemic it has been revealed.

According to a report from top four accounting firm KPMG, real estate prices are substantially higher than would have been the case without the virus.

The Impact of Covid on Australia’s Residential Property Market looked into how the property market has performed over the last 18 months when compared to a ‘no-Covid scenario’.

The report found, in Sydney the incredible 25 per cent price growth under Covid-19 is almost double the likely 13 per cent growth the market would have experienced without the pandemic. While in Brisbane, which is witnessing unprecedented sales prices, Covid-19 has pushed price growth out to a 19 per cent increase, compared with a no-Covid increase of 8 per cent – a difference in growth of almost 150 per cent.

According to KPMG’s analysis, national house prices are as much as 12 per cent higher, and unit prices as much as 13 per cent higher than they would have bee ‘in the normal course of events’.