Interpac Business and Migration Solutions Melbourne Australia

A revival in sales of luxury homes has helped drive nationwide house prices to their biggest annual gain in six years, with all but Perth among the capital cities to end 2009 at record highs.

After posting a 4.8 per cent gain in the December quarter, average prices nationwide clocked up an average increase of 12.1 per cent in 2009, Australian Property Monitors said.

"While the First Home Buyer sector kept the overall market afloat through the end of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, it's been the activity at the top end of the market that has driven the extraordinary overall result for 2009," said APM economist Matthew Bell.

"Activity in the more expensive suburbs has been driven by the surprisingly resilient jobs market experienced in late 2009 and a strongly rising share market," Mr Bell said. APM is owned by Fairfax Media, publisher of this site.

Melbourne houses recorded the highest annual growth rate among the state capitals, leaping 18.5 per cent to exceed the half-million dollar mark for the first time. Big gains for suburbs led by East Melbourne, Black Rock and Malvern, as well as north-suburban Dallas, helped the city notch up a 6.4 per cent increase in the December quarter alone, to leave the median price at $517,756 by year's end.

Sydney house prices jumped by 12.1 per cent for the year, to an average of $595,745. For the final three months of 2009, they advanced 5.3 per cent, with suburbs such as Sylvania Waters, Taren Point, Palm Beach and Malabar the top gainers.

Median house prices in the December quarter in Sydney, Brisbane, and Adelaide overtook highs previously reached prior to the global financial crisis, Mr Bell said.

"The price growth seen in the more expensive suburbs in 2009 has largely been a recovery of the price falls that occurred since late 2007 and early 2008," he said.

Brisbane houses rose 7.7 per cent in the year and 3 per cent in the quarter, APM said.

In Canberra, the annual increase was 10.6 per cent, while the quarter increase was 4.3 per cent.

Prices to moderate

Perth's houses rose 8.7 per cent in price for the year, catapulting their median price back over the half-a-million dollar level they were last at in March 2008. They rose to a median of $512,178, with a 3.1 per cent quarterly rise at the end of last year.

Those gains left the median Perth house price just shy of the $515,452 high reached in the December 2007 quarter, APM data shows.

Mr Bell said that rising interest rates and the end of the First Home Owner grant boost in December will probably slow activity in the market. He told Reuters that prices may rise 8 to 10 per cent in 2010, as homeowners upgrade their residences.

"It would've been a lot of people who sold into the relatively strong first-time home buyer market and maybe move into the next price bracket. So I think upgraders and investors will become a bigger part of the market as 2010 goes on," Mr Bell said.

The Reserve Bank lifted rates an unprecedented three consecutive months at the end of 2009 to a 3.75 per cent level. It's expected to raise rates again - to 4 per cent - when its board meets next week.

"The recovery of top-end prices to pre-GFC levels means that median price growth is likely to moderate across all sectors of the market in the first half of 2010", Mr Bell said.

Affordability

The market may be rising but gains are far from even, said Nomura International economist Stephen Roberts.

''Property prices are the hardest things to measure consistently from one quarter to the next,'' he said. ''One issue with the way house prices moved through 2009 is that you have different parts of the market starting to move.''

At the beginning of 2009, homes at the bottom of the market were in greater demand, spurred by the First Home Owners Grant boost, while sales of higher priced homes sagged.

Now that the grant boost has been removed and interest rates are rising, the momentum has switched to higher priced real estate, which is pushing up the overall figures in the home price data, Mr Roberts said.

Wealthier suburbs have helped by the recovery on the global equities market, generating more confidence among buyers, as well as a flood of international investors in recent months.

 Mr Roberts warned that if home prices rise too far above wages and incomes ``you can actually divide the population into those who still can afford housing and those who can't.''

''So it can lead to greater divisions in society when you have house prices that move too far.

A separate report released from Demographia over the weekend highlighted the declining affordability of Australian real estate.

The anti-planning group's Sixth International Housing Affordability Survey showed the median income household in Australia would need to pay more than half of its income to service a new mortgage on a median priced Sydney or Melbourne home.

That compares with less than 20 per cent in the land-locked American metro areas of Dallas-Fort Worth and Atlanta.

"The severe unaffordability of Sydney and Melbourne is, in fact, a problem of national proportions," the report said.

"In all of Australia's major markets, a median income household with a new loan on a median-priced house would have housing expenses that are higher than the national standard for 'mortgage stress,"' it said.

Additionally, about one-third of renters face higher housing costs because the price of land is driven higher, the group said.

Other recent measures also point to deteriorating housing affordability.

The Housing Industry Association affordability index dropped 3.3 per cent in the September quarter, after a 5 per cent drop in June.

(Source from: Business Day, with Reuters)