Sydney house prices continue to rise
But national property price growth hits three-year low.
Property prices in Australia's most populous city, Sydney, saw back-to-back quarterly rises in September.
The gains were reported by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in its latest quarterly capital cities residential property price index.
Sydney house prices rose 2.9% quarter-on-quarter in September, while attached dwellings (apartments, units and semi-detached row and terrace houses) increased 2.1% over the same period.
This follows similar results in the June quarter and two consecutive quarters of price falls before that for both established and attached dwellings in Sydney.
The September rise was bolstered by a well-performing middle segment ($750,000 to $1.5 million) of Sydney's housing market, as well as strong showings in the middle ($570,000 to $800,000) and upper market segments (greater than $900,000) of the attached dwellings market.
Prices in most capital cities across Australia enjoyed moderate rises in the October quarter, aside from properties in Perth and Darwin which fell 1.6% and 1.2% respectively.
In terms of annual property price growth, Melbourne enjoyed the largest gains through the year, with total dwelling values rising 6.9% year-on-year.
Hobart (6.8%), Canberra (5.5%), Sydney (3.2%), Adelaide (3.2%) and Brisbane (3.1%) also saw annual gains.
Darwin (-7.2%) and Perth (-4%) were the only two cities to post year-on-year losses.
Across all eight capital cities, average house prices rose 1.5% in the October quarter and 3.5% through the year, the weakest growth since the March quarter 2013.
The mean price of residential dwellings in NSW ($822,100) remains the highest across Australia, followed by Victoria ($651,600) and the ACT ($628,300). The lowest mean price is in Tasmania ($335,300).The total value of Australia's 9.8 million residential dwellings jumped $112.1 billion to $6.2 trillion. The average (mean) property price in Australia is now $631,000.
The cash rate remains very low but things would be different if capital cities had their own central banks.
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