Dr Nicola Powell

extreme rates of property price growth.

We saw the ability for people or knowledge-based workers to work from home and that really changed demand in our housing market and opened up locations where people could purchase.

And, you know, we saw that play out in extreme rates of property price growth in, you know, many areas across Australia.

And I think the biggest thing that surprised me is, you know, we have seen our capital city markets or Australia, our major capital city markets have been synchronised.

So that means they were all growing.

That's the first time we've seen that since post-GFC.

And I suppose 2022, the biggest surprise has been we're now back to our capital city markets operating on multiple speeds.

So we're seeing different rates of price growth and even different directions of price growth come out across our big cities.

So Brisbane and Adelaide are recording the strongest rates of house price growth, while we've got weaker conditions coming out of Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.

Yeah, I mean, we have seen one of the themes from this upswing has been houses have greatly outperformed units.

And that's something that's not just isolated to Sydney.

It's happening in most of our capital cities and we've got many of them with a record price gap between houses and units.

You know, I think we certainly have seen a preference for homeowners for space.

I think, you know, what we've seen from the pandemic is, you know, some of us are able to work remotely and work from home.

It's changed how we've used our homes.

And we have to remember that this upswing was driven by owner occupiers.

It was driven by upgraders.

And I think that's what's playing out here in the performance difference between houses and units.

And investors were really, they shied away from the market during this upswing.

They've started to come back over the last six months or so.