SYDNEY, Aug 3 (Reuters) – Australian home prices suffered a second month of steep falls in July as higher borrowing costs and unease over \u200ctax changes accelerated a downturn in the market that has grabbed \u200cthe attention of the country’s central bank. <\/p>\n
Figures from property consultant Cotality showed national home prices fell \u200b0.7% in July from June, the largest monthly drop since December 2022. Annual growth slowed sharply to 5.3%, well below the double-digit pace enjoyed early in the year. <\/p>\n
Sydney and Melbourne again led the monthly decline with falls of 1.4% and 1.2% \u200crespectively, leaving both more than \u20605% lower than their recent peaks. The slowdown spread to mid-sized cities, with Perth’s once-booming market all but flat in \u2060July. <\/p>\n
Gerard Burg, Cotality’s head of research, noted reported prices for the previous two months had also been revised lower, reflecting the speed of the downturn underway. <\/p>\n
“These revisions highlight \u200bthe rapid \u200bevolution in the market, particularly across the \u200bmid-sized capitals,” he said. <\/p>\n
“We have \u200cobserved a deterioration in the flow of new listings across the country in recent weeks, led by Sydney, as potential vendors assess a weak market and choose to wait until conditions improve.” <\/p>\n
The marked weakening was mentioned repeatedly by Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Michele Bullock in an appearance this week, stoking speculation the \u200ccentral bank is done raising interest rates \u200bafter three hikes this year. <\/p>\n
A sustained fall in \u200bhousing turnover would have wide implications \u200bfor the economy given the housing sector’s extensive links to \u200cindustries ranging from real estate services \u200bto tradespeople and construction. <\/p>\n
Separate \u200bdata from PropTrack showed its measure of home prices fell 0.3% in July, the fourth straight month of losses, with Sydney down 0.6%. <\/p>\n
PropTrack said \u200bproposed curbs to tax \u200cbenefits on investment properties were likely impacting buyer confidence, while ongoing \u200bprice falls could be leading buyers to wait until values stabilise. <\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Wayne Cole; Editing by Jamie Freed) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SYDNEY, Aug 3 (Reuters) – Australian home prices suffered a second month of steep falls in July as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":843595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46,274132],"class_list":["post-843594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy","tag-sydney-and-melbourne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}