Million dollar-plus property transactions became much more commonplace over the course of 2018, according to Corelogic’s recent property pulse.
Analysts, who have cast their eye over 25 years worth of sales data, have revealed a systemic shift in sentiment and demand with a steady increase in the share of sales across the more expensive price points.
Across the combined capital cities, sales below $200,000 accounted for just 1.8 per cent of all sales, while sales of $1 million properties accounted for 19.5 per cent of all sales.
The dominant price point over 2018 sales was between $400,000 to $600,000 accounting for 28.3 per cent of sales across the country.
“The most prominent price point for sales was $400,000 to $600,000, while there were more sales of at least $1 million than there were below $200,000 or between $800,000 and $1 million,” Corelogic analyst Cameron Kusher said.
The share of sales annually by price point over each five-year period from 1993 to 2018 revealed that the majority of sales occurred below $200,000 in 1993, compared to virtually no sales below that price point in 2018.
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Sydney, which has been a declining market since May last year, had 37 per cent of all sales across the city at or in excess of $1 million.
The spike, compared to a decade earlier when $1 million sales accounted for 8.9 per cent of all sales, has highlighted the increasing prevalence of million dollar sales in Australia's wealthiest city over the past decade.
Sydney, which benefited from house prices surging nearly 20 per cent in 12 months between 2016 and 2017, has now seen house prices reset back to the level of August 2016.
The greatest share of sales in Melbourne occurred between $400,000 and $600,000 accounting for 30.4 per cent while 21.7 per cent of all sales were at least $1 million, up from 5.4 per cent a decade earlier.
A decade ago, 51.2 per cent of all sales in Melbourne were between $200,000 and $400,000 compared to just 7.2 per cent last year.
Similarly, the greatest share of property sales in Brisbane during 2018 occurred at a price between $400,000 and $600,000 at 35.6 per cent followed by $200,000 to $400,000 at 28.7 per cent.
Over the year, just 1.7 per cent of sales were below $200,000 compared to 7.8 per cent at or in excess of $1 million. Median house prices for Brisbane currently sit at $550,000.
Despite house prices falling over the past five years, Perth saw sales of $1 million properties increase in 2018 from 7.8 per cent to 9.3 per cent.
Despite the top-end uptick, Perth dwelling values fell 4.7 per cent over 2018, with the median price of a Perth house sitting at $471,730, roughly half the median values for both in Sydney, and well below median prices in Melbourne, Canberra and Brisbane.
“Values are currently declining fastest across the more expensive properties and over the coming year we would expect to see the share of sales over $1 million to reduce as values continue to fall,” Kusher said.
“As a result, we’d also expect slightly more sales occurring at lower price points, we don’t expect any material change in the share of sales under $200,000, in fact they may reduce further.”
Limited access to credit has been the key driver of the current downturn as well as a retreat of foreign buyers from the Australian market and an oversupply of new homes in some pockets of the capital cities.
Only three Australian capitals saw values rise over the past twelve months, Hobart 7.2 per cent, Canberra 3.4 per cent and Adelaide 1 per cent.
