Upper Mountains real estate market highlights
The Upper Blue Mountains real estate market has always been quite robust through changing markets, this can be attributed to our wide buyer demographic (retirees, professional couples, first home buyers, your families, tree changers, investors), our proximity to Sydney and the appeal of the surrounding natural environment. While the local housing market has experienced slight drops in dwelling prices over the last 12 months of between 0.4% (Katoomba) and 1.8% (Blackheath) these drops are lower than the recorded national average of 1.9%.
Despite the recent falls in property prices the vast majority of homeowners in the Upper Blue Mountains remain in positive equity positions with residential property values remaining between 53.3% (Leura) higher and 67.8% (Katoomba) higher than they were 5 years ago.
Ray White Blackheath took two properties to Auction on Sunday 9th September, both sold ‘Under the Hammer’ representing a 100% Auction Clearance rate. Our next Auction will be held on Sunday 14th October 12pm in the Hydro Majestic ballroom Medlow Bath. Everyone is welcome to attend.
You can feel confident that the market in the Upper Blue Mountains is still very buoyant with high levels of buyer activity, strong Auction clearance rates and low days on market.
National real estate market highlights
‘National dwelling values are down 1.9% over the last 12months. The weakest performing cities are Sydney & Melbourne, while Hobart stands out as showing the highest rate of capital gain so far this year with dwelling values up 5.6% . Values have trended higher in Brisbane, Adelaide and Canberra over the past year to date but are lower in Perth & Darwin as well as the Sydney and Melbourne markets.
Despite the falls in Sydney the vast majority of homeowners remain in a positive equity position considering residential property values remain 49% higher than they were 5 years ago and 83% higher relative to 10 years ago.
The overall housing market weakness is heavily concentrated across the premium sector of the market, CoreLogic recorded a 5.4% fall in values across the upper quartile of the combined capital cities over the part 12 months while the broad middle of the market is down 0.5% over the year and the most inexpensive quartile has a recorded a 0.6% rise in value.
Stronger market conditions across Australia’s more affordable areas are likely attributable to a rise of first home buyers in the market place as well as the on-going credit reform with premiums being placed on interest only loans and investor loans’.
Source: Tim Lawless – CoreLogic
The Ray White network just recorded its best Australasian preliminary auction clearance for some time with 53 per cent of its 221 auctions last week selling under the hammer.
Our Victorian members achieved a great 61 per cent preliminary auction clearance with 90 auctions scheduled. At Ray White Blackheath our current clearance rate for 2018 is 79%.
On average we have 3.1 registered bidders per auction and our average crowd size is more than 32 people – so things are definitely warming up across Australia and New Zealand with the market gaining momentum as we head into Spring.
