Homes are taking longer to sell with listings of more than 180 days up over 9 per cent last month.

According to data for the month from SQM Research, the number of older listings rose by 9.2 per cent to more than 55,272 dwellings.

National residential property listings rose for the month by 5.8 per cent to 242,159 properties from 228,945 recorded in August. 

While that figure was down by 6.8 per cent over the year nationally, Hobart and Sydney recorded a significant increase of 49.4 per cent and 26.4 per cent for the past 12 months. 

The largest monthly increases in listings were in Hobart, Canberra and Brisbane with 17.4 per cent, 12.7 per cent and 7.3 per cent respectively.

For the year, Hobart, Canberra and Sydney property listings were all up, by 71.1 per cent, 41.2 per cent and 36.2 per cent respectively.

The overall increases were due to the overall increase in old listings, according to SQM. 

Nationally, new listings (less than 30 days) rose 3.8 per cent over September to 73,461 properties on the market.

Hobart at 26.4 per cent and Canberra at 21 per cent recorded the largest increase in new listings for the month, while for the year Canberra, Hobart and Melbourne were up by 34.4 per cent, 29.2 per cent and 22 per cent.

Total property listings

^{Source: SQM Research}

“Older property listings are accumulating as a direct result of the national housing downturn,” SQM managing director Louis Christopher said.

“It is due to the fact there are currently more sellers than buyers in the national housing market.

“And that downturn continued into September. The downturn still continues to persist, even while we are seeing some stability with weekly auction clearance rates and asking prices. 

“There was also a pick-up in new listings, particularly for the Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra and Hobart housing markets—that was to be expected, given we have entered into the spring selling period.

“New listing numbers are actually down on the long-term average activity recorded for a typical spring selling season.”

SQM also found that as of October 4 there were 6299 residential properties nationwide selling under distressed conditions, down from 6384 distressed listings recorded in August.

Distressed selling activity was driven by ACT (up 14.3 per cent), Queensland (up 2.8 per cent) and SA (up 1.5 per cent).

During September, national asking prices rose by 0.1 per cent for combined homes with capital city asking prices up by 0.1 per cent.

The data suggests vendors were reluctant to reduce their asking prices further than initially listed during the month, according to SQM.