Home price gains continue in early 2015
Home prices have kicked off 2015 with further steep rises, led by Melbourne, Sydney and Hobart.
CoreLogic RP Data's home price index shows the average of the capital cities was a rise of 1.3 per cent last month, 1.9 per cent over the three months to the end of January and 8 per cent over the past year.
The annual gain was again led by Sydney's 13 per cent rise, which was the only city with an annual gain above the average.
However, it was Melbourne which led the January gains, rising 2.7 per cent, versus a 1.4 per cent gain in Sydney and 1.6 per cent increase in Hobart.
Other capitals were much weaker, with Canberra up 0.9 per cent and Brisbane 0.6, while Perth, Adelaide and Darwin all recorded home price falls last month, as did non-capital city areas in December.
Canberra also posted a price decline over the past quarter and year, while Darwin prices also went 2.6 per cent backwards in the January quarter.
CoreLogic RP Data's research director Tim Lawless said the 8 per cent average annual growth rate is still down on peaks seen early last year.
"When we look at the annual results, it's still tapering though, so we saw the market peak in annual terms in April last year, and we've seen that growth rate fall from 11.5 per cent in April to 8 per cent now," he said.
Mr Lawless is forecasting that trend of gradually slowing prices to continue throughout the year, and said it is impossible to draw any conclusions from January's very strong monthly rise.
"We're only just starting to see auctions come back to decent numbers now, over the last week of January," he said.
"So I think until we start to see the February and the first quarter numbers we won't get a firm reading for how the 2015 market is shaping up."
However, Mr Lawless also noted that a rate cut at the Reserve Bank's next board meeting tomorrow, or the following meeting in March, could boost home prices in the autumn selling season.
"Any cut in rates, of course, will be stimulatory to the market, so that will provide some further demand to housing, potentially push growth rates up a bit higher," he added.
A boost in home prices from a rate cut could be limited though by a lack of confidence in the economy, very high prices already in key markets and the prospect of stricter lending limits being imposed on banks by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA).
"The key obstacles in the marketplace will be affordability - we're already seeing Sydney median house price up around $850,000 - yields are very low, and I think a big part of demand in the marketplace at the moment is demand from investors and we've already seen some direction action from APRA ... limiting investor lending to no more than 10 per cent a year," Mr Lawless concluded.
