Anyone else feel that despite the vast amount of research conducted into the property market, there’s never anything particularly relevant for those of us living in Canberra?
Us too!
So we decided to change that.
We were particularly interested to see how Canberra’s property prices compared to Sydney. We know how they differ right now, but how has this changed over the last decade?
Here’s what our team discovered.
Right now, the gap between Canberra and Sydney house prices is the largest it’s been since 2002. Sydney’s 2016 median house price was 1.9 times more than the 2016 median house price for Canberra.
The graph below shows how the % gap between Canberra and Sydney median houses has changed since 2002. You will note that between 2008 – 2011, the median house in the two cities differed by an average of 20%. As of 2016, it had blown out to 47%.
And this graph shows how Canberra property prices loosely track the movement of Sydney property prices, with the time lag evident on the curve.
There are many factors contributing to the extremely strong property growth seen in Sydney in recent years, with the high level of foreign investment being one the major one.
However, now that regulators have stepped in to make it harder for foreign investors, we may start to see a further slowing of Sydney’s growth rate.
Canberra property prices may have historically followed those of Sydney, but we don’t feel it’s being too optimistic to think there’s still room for Canberra’s prices to move upwards over the short to median term to reduce the price gap. Particularly since rates are low and the most recent Census data shows reports Canberran’s as having the highest median weekly income in the nation.
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