The quarterly survey of house price movements form the Australian Bureau of Statistics has confirmed what we already know – Sydney is driving house prices higher.
The ABS’s survey for the three months to September showed a 2.7% rise for Sydney prices, around three times that of Australia’s other cities.
Prices in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Hobart all rose just 1% by comparison, according to the ABS’s Residential Property Price Index.
Darwin and Canberra prices rose 0.3% for the quarter, while Perth prices dipped 0.1%.
Overall, house prices were up 1.5% in the quarter in the country’s major capital cities.
In the year to September, Sydney’s jumped a bullish 14.6%, far ahead of Melbourne and Brisbane where prices were up a respectable 6.9% and 6.7% respectively.
House prices in the other capital cities showed much smaller annual price rises.
The ABS said the total value of Australia’s 9.4 million residential dwellings increased to $5.3 trillion.
The mean price of dwellings in Australia is now $563,100, an increase of $8,300 over the September quarter.
Total mortgage debt on those houses is around $US1.3 trillion (but not every house has a mortgage, around a third).
