After more than two years of strong momentum, Australia’s property market has seen its sales settlements fall quarter-on-quarter, with New South Wales experiencing the largest declines in both property sales volume and aggregate value, according to the PEXA Property Insights Report.
In a rising rate and inflationary environment, NSW saw its residential sales settlements dip by -13% quarter over quarter to 41,357, with an aggregate value of $47.7 billion, down -16.8% QoQ, signalling that Australia’s most populous state was seeing a faster market slowdown than the rest of the country.
Topping the nation for total volume for the quarter was Queensland, which recorded 46,621 residential sale settlements (-10.9% QoQ) with an aggregate value of $32.3 billion (-11.8% QoQ).
Victoria posted a modest decline in both volume of residential property sales settlements with 44,255 (-11.8% QoQ), and an aggregate value of $37.8 billion (-10.2% QoQ) but recorded nearly 3,000 more sales settlements for the quarter than its larger neighbour, NSW.
Western Australia’s property market has continued to show resilience, recording a combined 21,648 residential and commercial sale settlements (-11.4% QoQ), with an aggregate value of $12.9 billion (-10.9% QoQ).
“The largest and fastest rate rises announced by the Reserve Bank of Australia since the mid-1990s are certainly starting to have an impact, with the Australian residential property market’s record run for the past few years well and truly over,” said Mike Gill, PEXA’s head of research. “Although most states saw double-digit declines for the quarter across both total volume and aggregate value of sale settlements, we must remember that we are coming off record-high levels of activity. Also, we are not seeing the same level of residential buyer trepidation from the commercial sector. Although commercial settlement volumes were down in some states, the national commercial market performed relatively well in the September quarter, with Victoria posting an increase of 1.2% in settlement volumes.”
The PEXA report, which also dives into postcode-level activity, showed that outer metropolitan growth corridors such as Truganina, Marsden Park, and Craigieburn continued to post strong residential sale settlement results. Surfers Paradise also continued its strong momentum seen over the past two years.
