Investor News

Michelle Hele HOMEBUYERS filled with pre-Christmas cheer have boosted median house prices to levels not seen since before the global financial crisis, according to the latest figures from Australian Property Monitors.

It found that median house prices in the December quarter in Brisbane had gone up by 3 per cent – double the rate of the previous quarter.

The rise puts the increase in median house prices over the year in Brisbane at 7.7 per cent.

While that figure is below the national average of 12.1 per cent, APM economist Matthew Bell believes the Brisbane housing market is doing well and will continue to do so this year.

The Brisbane unit market did not fare so well, though, with a drop in the median unit price of 1.4 per cent for the December quarter. Brisbane was the only city to record a drop over the quarter. The median unit price rose 1.8 per cent over the year.

Mr Bell said the increase in median house prices in Brisbane was the highest recorded in the city since the end of 2007 and early 2008, just before the global financial crisis hit.

He said Brisbane median house prices had not felt the effects of the GFC as quickly as other cities, and although Brisbane was now recording more solid growth it was currently less than in cities such as Melbourne and Sydney.

"Brisbane was probably one of the last cities to be performing well at that stage (the end of 2007), and Brisbane kept going a little bit longer than other cities," he said.

But Mr Bell is confident Brisbane will once again hit its straps, with predictions that Brisbane and Perth median house prices will catch up to other cities and may outperform them by the end of the year.

REIQ chief executive Dan Molloy said there had been a "soft landing" in the Brisbane market. "Looking at the performances of Sydney and Melbourne, it is interesting that Brisbane went pretty well in terms of the last cycle. When the southern markets were languishing in 2007, the Brisbane market continued to perform pretty well," he said.

RPData national research director Tim Lawless believes the APM figures are unexpectedly high and probably reflected the type of properties that are selling rather than true capital growth.

"A resurgence of interest in higher-priced properties combined with the fallback of first home buyers is likely to have played a role in inflating the latest growth figures," he said.