Happy New Year!  Myself and the team at Elite are all back in the office and looking very much forward to a busy 2022.  Hopefully you have had a great start to the year.

The property market is starting to wake up and auctions returned over the weekend with 598 auctions reported to the REIV producing a solid but expected clearance rate of 82%. In addition, there were 709 private sales.

Whilst activity in the real estate market has commenced, it hasn’t been without disruptions and one could argue it has been a slow start to the year already.  It seems some people (potential vendors) took extended holidays due to the inability to have holidays in previous years which has delayed some properties coming onto the market.  Also there have been further delays due to the explosion of Covid case numbers with many people having to isolate at home and therefore making it impossible for selling agents to inspect properties to conduct sales appraisals.

We have learned to live like this for the past couple of years so it has done little to affect confidence in the property market, but it does make us realise that we could be in for another year of disruptions and no doubt properties with live campaigns may be forced to pause mid campaign due to occupants of the property having contracted Covid.

Domain have released their December 21 quarter median house price data with it showing that Melbourne’s property prices increased 5.8% to an all time high of $1,101,682.  Although, personally I felt there was a little slow down in the property market in December last year, there was no doubt some significant growth in October and November and therefore their data appears accurate.  Their data also showed an increase in property prices of 18.6% over the year and whilst this growth rate is not sustainable, with stock levels still on the low side and lot of confidence in the market, the signs are there that we should see some further growth in property prices throughout the year.  Interestingly, the median house price in Sydney is $1,601,467 which is considerably higher than Melbourne however Melbourne is predicted to have stronger population growth over the next five years so the price gap between the two capital cities could become smaller.

With most people back from holidays, the amount of properties on the market will start to rise.  If all things remain as they are now, we should be in for a very active six months in the real estate market across the board.

Have a great week.

Kim Easterbrook