Property Newscast: March 2025 – Market Stabilizing, Rate Cut Signals Change

Welcome back to another Property Newscast on The Property & Finance Show with your host Kyrillos Mansour (KM), founder of First Brick Property Buyers Agency.

In this episode, I unpack the latest insights from the CoreLogic March 2025 Housing Chart Pack, covering everything you need to know about Australia’s property market right now.

We dive into:
 🏡 What’s happening nationally with property values
 📉 Why Sydney and Melbourne are lagging behind
 📈 The capital cities still hitting record highs
 📊 Listing levels, vendor discounting & days on market
 💸 Rental market trends & where yields are highest
 🏦 The first RBA rate cut since 2020 – and how it impacts buyers, sellers & investors

Whether you're just starting out or scaling your portfolio, this is a must-listen market update to stay ahead of the curve.

🎙️ Hosted by Kyrillos Mansour (KM), founder of First Brick Property Buyers Agency
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:49

Hello and welcome back to the Property and Finance Show. I am your host, Carlos Manor Km, and this is your March, 2025 property newscast where we break down the latest housing market data from CoreLogic . Talk about what it means for buyers, sellers, investors across the country. So let's just strum straight into it. So we'll start off with the national market snapshot. So Australia's housing market has started to show some signs of life again. So in February, national dwelling values rose 0.3% streaming the quarterly decline to just minus 0.1%. But annual growth is still slowing up only 3.8% year on year . The lowest annual growth since August 23. Regional markets continue to outperform capitals with regional values up 1% over the quarter versus a minus 0.4% decline in capital cities. So what does this mean? The market isn't surging, but it is stabilizing and regional areas are still in strong demand. If we have a look at a city by city breakdown, let's look at how some of our key cities are tracking. So Sydney dwelling values rose 0.3% in February, but the quarterly figure remains down minus 0.9% and Sydney is now 1.6 below 1.6%. Below its September, 2024 peak. The top 25% of the market saw a small improvement in February indicating potential signs of stabilization in higher and homes in Melbourne. It also rose 0.4% in February, but recorded the minus 1.1% quarterly drop with value still sitting 6.4% below the March 22 peak. Like Sydney. The upper quartile in Melbourne showed the strongest monthly gain, possibly a reaction to the recent rate cut. Brisbane, continued strength across the board values rose 0.2% in February with an annual growth of 9.7%. Brisbane remains a a record high driven by strong interstate migration, tight supply and solid demand at all price points . Moving on to Adelaide up 0.3% in February and as in the upper solid 11.9% year on year also sitting at a record high, the lower and middle segments of the market continued to lead the growth in Adelaide. Moving out west to Perth. Once again, one of the top performers dwelling values rose 0.3% in February and a huge 14.3% annually. Perfs affordability and rental yields remain very highly attractive to investors. Hobart has a Hobart's, had a little small bounce back with values rising 0.4% in February, but the quarterly change is still

Speaker 2: 3:48

Slightly negative at minus one at minus 0.1%. Hobart remains 11.9% below its 2022 peak moving out north at Darwin. So Darwin's been a mixed bag. Values decline minus 0.1% In February vo they are up 1.5% annually. Prices remain a little bit volatile and are still 5.9% below the 2014 peak. However, actually we've seen on the data side, we've actually seen a bit more activity in Darwin, so not sure what's going on there. Investors moving out for better yields , um, affordable price points . So we'll keep an eye on Darwin Canberra, slightly positive in February with a 0.2% gain, but the quarter is still negative at minus 0.8% and values are 7.1% below the May, 2022 peak market conditions remain subdued. So having a look at the big picture, Perth, Adelaide, and Brisbane are strong, are the strongest performing capitals while Sydney and Melbourne are lagging. Both higher end segments in both Sydney and Melbourne may be turning a corner. We have a look at sales and listing data. So sales , um, in February 40,085 sales nationally in February, bringing the 12 month total to 532,244 sales, that is 6.2% higher than last year by momentum has slowed recently. So there is a bit more stock on the market, but it is slowing down days on market . So properties are taking a bit longer to sell. The national medium has jumped from 27 days to 42 days over the last six months. That's getting a bit longer for properties to sell. So more stock and a slower time to sell vendor discounting. So discounts have increased slightly to 3.6% nationally, meaning sellers have are having to negotiate more. So what is vendor discount? Vendor discount means when a vendor lists a property and then they list that at a certain price, depending on what the property sells for, it'll either sell at a discount compared to the asking price or at a premium compared to the asking price. So a 3.6% national discount means overall across all properties that have been listed across the entire country, whatever that price point is, typically they're selling 3.6% less than what they've asked for. So if they were asking for a million dollars, it would sell for 3.6% less than a million dollars. If we have a look at listings, so new listings are down 2.9% year on year total listings are up 2% from last year, but still 10.5% below the five year average. So while total supply is creeping up, buyer activity has also softened giving more negotiation power to buyers. We have a look at rental yields and rents in general rents. National rents rose 4.1% year on year down from 8.3% in March 24. Yields holding steady are 3.7%. Nationally standouts are perf Hobart and

Speaker 3: 6:46

Darwin . So perf 4.3%, Hobart 4.4% and Darwin 6.7%. Rents are still climbing, but growth is slowing, especially with larger household sizes and weaker migration numbers affecting demand. We have a look at interest rates and finance. So obviously the RBA has cut the rates by 25 basis points , uh, to bring the cash rate down to 4.1%. Um , this was the first rate cut since 2020. So what did this mean? Um , this equates to $121 monthly saved on a $750,000 mortgage. Um , however that said the RBA is cautious watching inflation and employment closely. So new lending up 1.4% in quarter 4, 20 24 to $87.2 billion first home buyers up 1.5% sitting at 29.2% of the unoccupied lending and investor lending fell slightly, but it's still 22% higher than this time last year. So final thoughts on today's , uh, property newscast. The market is settling, not surging. Regional areas and lower price brackets are still seeing strong demand. Meanwhile, Sydney and Melbourne remain in a holding pattern and buyers have more negotiation power right now. The RBA rate cut might give the market a small Dutch , but economic caution remains the theme. And that's about it for the month property newscast on the Property and finance show. So this was the core logic march , um, housing chart unpacked. Um, and if you found this helpful, interesting, make sure you follow, share, leave a review, let let your friends know and let us know what you want us to talk about. Next time, we'll be getting some guests on soon , um, getting some , um, different episodes , um, going. So we'll be having , uh, different topics just like how we used to. These ones are what we call the property news cards where it's just myself and a bit of news. Keep you updated with what's going on. And so that's this week's property newscast. Thank you for listening in and we will see you next time. Cheers.