Property
Issue No. 47 - June/ july
First Home Buyers bump shows
by Mr Kel Spencer
SA’s residential property market has experienced a decrease in growth for the first quarter of 2009, but remains resilient in comparison to other states.
Nationally, the First Home Owners Grant is affecting the property sector with the most activity seen in suburbs of higher affordability. Activity in the mid to high affordability sector is decreasing, as home owners become more susceptible to the fear of losing their jobs.
SA building approval activity has risen 3.34% since December 2008 with 1618 building approvals for the start of 2009. Nationally, building approvals have fallen by 6.3% with an increase of 3.1% in housing finance commitments for the period.
With regard to the proportion of family income required to meet average home loan repayments, SA is more affordable than the eastern states and is still the second most affordable state after Tasmania.
Supporting SA’s housing market is strong labour market conditions, strong wages growth, the highest annual rate of population growth in 23 years and low rental vacancies.
In the first quarter of 2009, metropolitan house prices for SA fell 1.39% in mean value to $355,000. Altogether metropolitan Adelaide’s average house price has fallen 2.27% since it stood at $363,250 in March 2008.
The statewide median house price fell 2.01% over the past 12 months from $330,000 to $323,375, with median price for units and apartments also falling by 5.17% for the quarter to $275,000. There were about 5782 statewide house sale transactions in March 2009 quarter, compared to 6704 a year ago.
Graph 1 illustrates growth in Adelaide house prices from September 2006 to March 2009.
Table 1 illustrates the top 10 growth suburbs based on median house prices for the March quarter 2009. It can be seen that areas more highly accessible to first home buyers, with the focus on affordability, are the key performers of the quarter.
SA has the lowest median house price of all mainla...
