Welcome to 2023 and to another exciting year in real estate. Having enjoyed a few weeks of glorious summer weather, we are all feeling energised and optimistic about the year ahead.
In Melbourne, discussing the weather is our favourite pastime – much like drinking coffee, planning overseas holidays, and talking about real estate – so it’s hard to resist comparing our fickle weather to the property market. Eliza Owen, CoreLogic’s head of research, predicts that 2023 will continue to see “a mix of headwinds and tailwinds for housing market performance.” She has singled out two distinct characteristics of capital growth trends in 2022, with the first being that not all housing markets were uniformly impacted by market headwinds.
“More expensive markets tended to see sharper declines, while the more affordable segment of the market where buyers typically do not have to extend themselves as much to buy into, saw greater resilience to increases in interest rates,” she said.
“The second trend is the pace of decline has been slowing on a broad basis since September.”
On a positive note, one of the distinctive features of capital growth in 2022 was a slowdown in the pace of decline toward the end of the year. National value falls eased to -1.0% in November, following the steep monthly falls of -1.6% in August. Unemployment remains low and rental demand is still high.
At Morrison Kleeman, our indicators have been positive with greater numbers at our open for inspection listings this year, and a general positivity with our buyers and sellers.
