Perth house prices still falling
This will not come as any surprise to anyone following the real estate market in Perth, but house prices are still heading south. In the last 12 months to the end of Sept the median price for Perth fell by 2.3 percent. CoreLogic are expecting the medium house price in Perth to end up around 2.5 percent down for the 12 months to the end of the calendar year.
As you can see from the CoreLogic table picture I found in the West late last week, the only two capital city zones to suffer a fall in house prices in the last 12 months to the end of Sept were Darwin and Perth.
Folks in Hobart, Melbourne, and Sydney will be smiling with upturns of 14.3, 12.1, and 10.5 over the last 12 months.
According to CoreLogic, due to the year on year falls the average property price for Perth has only increased by 2.3 percent in the last 10 years.
If this is true, and to me this seems like a worst-case view, then this is reasonably grim news for anyone who bought an investment property in the Perth metropolitan area eight to ten years ago. Not taking into account any tax offsets they may—or may not—have enjoyed, they would have been somewhat better off investing in the stock market or even putting that money into a fixed term deposit.
But this is the average. There are likely to be some regions that did much better, and, just as likely, some regions that have done a tad worse.
It doesn't seem quite so bad when you look at it from the median price view. The Perth median price ten years ago was $508,630 and is now $462,783. That's 'only' a fall in the median price of around $46k ... which somehow doesn't sound quite as bad.
The big question is obviously: "What is going to happen in the next two to three years?"
Well most forecasters have been telling us that the market that Perth prices had hit the bottom for the last three years. And they were wrong! But they are telling us again that prices have hit the bottom and to expect a small uptick in 2018.
I guess we can but wait and see.