PHOTO: There are fears first home buyers will again lose out as home prices recover to previous highs. ABC News: Angela Lavoipierre
Ever felt like a dog chasing its tail, going around in circles but never catching up with your objective?
If you’re a wannabe first home buyer, especially in Sydney and Melbourne, you’ve probably got that feeling right now.
Just when significant property price falls of around 15 per cent in Sydney and more than 10 per cent in Melbourne gave some prospective purchasers a sniff of breaking in, those markets turned around and launched higher again.
In fact, the last three months of 2019 saw the fastest quarterly property price growth in a decade, according to CoreLogic’s numbers.
Nationally, home prices rose 4 per cent during the fourth quarter, with increases of more than 6 per cent in both Sydney and Melbourne.
While Sydney and Melbourne, as well as the national average, are still below their 2017 peaks, at the current pace of growth those record price levels are set to be broken by March this year.
Data on vendor asking prices for houses from SQM Research also has them back around record levels, with Sydney again above $1.3 million and Melbourne above $1 million.
The situation is even worse for those hoping to live somewhere close to the major cities’ CBDs, with Melbourne’s inner-east and Sydney’s inner-west leading the price rises over the past year, while other inner-urban and more prestigious suburbs filled out the remainder of the top 10 highest annual growth rates.
READ MORE VIA ABC