The extraordinary momentum carried over from 2020, coupled with monetary and fiscal stimulus measures, has contributed to an unprecedented year of growth and litany of outstanding results for the Australian residential housing market.
CoreLogic’s annual Best of the Best Report shows apartments and townhomes dominated the top ten list of Australia’s most expensive property sales in 2021, including three unit sales above $40 million each in the newly completed Barangaroo tower on Sydney’s harbourfront. The top ten sales for the year totalled $407 million and ranged from $31,250,000 to $60 million.
In reviewing the year, CoreLogic’s Head of Research, Eliza Owen, said the estimated value of Australia’s residential real estate had gone from $7.2 trillion at the end of November 2020 to reach a record high of $9.4 trillion in just 12 months.
In addition, sales volumes climbed to an estimated 614,635 in the past 12 months, the highest level in almost 18 years, as dwelling values nationally increased 22.2% in the 12 months to November, marking the highest increase since 1989.
“Strong housing market performance over the year was driven by multiple factors, including low interest rates, fiscal and institutional support for households, high household savings and relatively low levels of advertised stock,” she said.
“Rates of housing turnover had also been relatively low for some years before these factors boosted housing demand, which may also explain the elevated volume of sales in the past 12 months, which at November was 32.6% above the decade annual average.”
Higher-end lifestyle markets such as the Mornington Peninsula in Melbourne, the Northern Beaches in Sydney and the Gold and Sunshine coasts in South East Queensland were among the year’s top performers, as internal movement from cities to regions increased. “This may be in part attributable to how Covid-19 continued to shape demand trends, with coastal or leafy settings being more desirable as some workers were empowered to work remotely.”
“However, this phenomenon may also just reflect market dynamics that have been observed in the housing market cycle over about a decade, where more expensive markets (particularly in Sydney and Melbourne) tend to show more volatility. This means during the upswing phase of the housing market, expensive property markets in these cities will generally see higher growth rates.”
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