AS price growth has started to drop in Australia’s powerhouse southern property markets, Brisbane prices have held firm.
Preliminary analysis of the property market’s performance in January reveals that while Brisbane’s property prices have not gone up, unlike other capital cities, they have not gone down either.
CoreLogic head of research Tim Lawless said when the monthly figures were released on Thursday the figures would show a drop nationally in property values of about 0.5 per cent.
For the first 29 days of the month, the majority of capital cities recorded falls in dwelling values.
Sydney was down 0.8 per cent, Melbourne was down 0.2 per cent and Adelaide about 0.2 per cent.
“Brisbane is looking absolutely flat, I suppose the positive thing to say is we are not seeing a decline over the month, based on the month to date,’’ he said.
“We are not seeing a rise either there is a high likelihood it is still the unit market dragging things a bit lower. The detached housing market has seen fairly stable conditions across Brisbane, but there has been this drag down affect from the apartment market, which is likely attributable to concerns around supply and buyer caution.
Mr Lawless said at this time of year the market was more volatile due to the low number of sales.
“ I think we will get a firmer reading of the market when we see our numbers in February even though we do see fewer observations during January, I think we are still getting a feel based on listing numbers, based on early indicators from the auctions that we have not seen the market move through the bottom of its downturn.
“I’d be quite surprised if we were seeing market bottoming out now, if that were the case there would have to be some sort of catalyst being lower mortgage rates or a loosening of credit policies and we are simply are not seeing anything like that.