Brisbane Property Market Update March 2024
Melinda Jennison
Brisbane Median House Prices surpass $900,000 for the first time in History!
Brisbane’s property price growth throughout March has re-accelerated across both the house and unit markets. Buyer activity has been strong, and competition for quality houses, units and townhouses has been fierce in recent months.
Brisbane has experienced thirteen straight months of positive dwelling price growth and the rate of price acceleration continues to outperform the national average. The housing market in Brisbane is also outperforming the national average, but the unit market is the standout, with unit values in Brisbane performing 3-4 times better than the national average.
Last month the data confirmed that whilst the month-on-month growth in Brisbane property was still positive, the rate of the price escalation was easing. However, March data has demonstrated a further uplift in the rate of growth over the last month.
There has been some reprieve for buyers over the last 4 weeks with new listings coming to the market within the last 28 days increasing 9.5% throughout March, according to SQM Research, compared to the month prior. This has provided buyers with a little more choice in terms of what to buy. New listings in Brisbane throughout March 2024 were 12.7% higher, compared to March 2023, again providing some relief for the pent-up demand that has been building across many market segments in Brisbane.
Looking at total listing volumes in Brisbane, there is still a shortage of properties available, with a reduction of 11.1% year on year. Keeping with the seasonal trend that occurs most years, the total volume of listings throughout March in Brisbane was higher than in the Brisbane Property Market Update February 2024, with 11.1% more properties in total for buyers to consider.
CoreLogic auction data showed that the average auction clearance rate across Brisbane throughout March was 64.7%. According to Apollo Auctions, Brisbane saw an average of 3.7 registered bidders per auction in March, compared to 4 registered bidders per auction throughout February. Additionally, the number of registered bidders who actively participated in each auction throughout March jumped to 60.8%, up from 56.03% in February. This confirms that buyer activity in the market remains strong with a heavy imbalance between supply and demand, in favour of sellers. Whilst these conditions exist, buyer competition will remain elevated, and prices will continue to escalate.
Brisbane Dwelling Values
Dwelling values increased 1.1% in Brisbane throughout March, up from 0.9% in February. The quarterly change escalated slightly to 3.0%, up from 2.9% in the three months to February.
The median value for a dwelling in Greater Brisbane is now $817,564 which is a new record high for Brisbane. This is also $11,971 more than last month, and as surpassed the $800,000 mark. It is currently $805,593 which is $8,775 more than last month and $30,347 more than 3 months ago.
Source: Corelogic
The median value of a dwelling in Brisbane continues to escalate above the median value for Melbourne and is approaching Canberra’s median dwelling value. This is despite the fact that median values for both houses and units throughout Brisbane remain lower than those in Melbourne. Compared to Canberra, Brisbane’s median house values are still much lower, however for the first time, median unit values in Brisbane have surged above those in Canberra. The compositional bias of dwelling types within each city skews the dwellings data, so it’s important to understand the data by property type when assessing which city is more affordable.
The segmentation of dwelling value growth in Brisbane shows that the top end of the market has slowed down more than the middle and bottom end of the market in the three months up to the end of February 2024, compared to months prior.
Properties that make up the lowest 25% of dwelling values have grown 3.8% over the 3 months to 28th February, down from 4.0% over the 3 months to the end of January. The middle 50% of property values are now tracking at a quarterly change of 3.2%, down from 3.4% the month prior. And the top 25% of property values have grown 2.3% over the last quarter, compared to 2.8% one month prior. This data confirms that the price deceleration is happening at a faster rate amongst the more expensive properties throughout Brisbane.
As the unit market continues to outperform the housing market in terms of monthly and quarterly price growth, the contribution that units would be making to the lowest 25% of dwelling value growth throughout the city cannot be underestimated.
Source: Corelogic
PropTrack dwellings data also confirms that Brisbane experienced positive growth throughout March 2024, with price growth performance within Brisbane exceeding the national and capital city average for the last month and the past year as a whole.