Fresh housing affordability figures put buyers out in front

In fact, every state and territory with the exception of the Northern Territory recorded an improvement in housing affordability, with the greatest decline seen in NSW at a fall of 1.3 per cent.

The weighted average capital city median house price also declined, falling by 2.2 per cent to $722,028 over the quarter, which stemmed from a median house price decline in all capital cities except for Adelaide and Darwin.

According to Darren Kasehagen, head of third-party banking at Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, this has both positives and negatives for the property market.

“A marginal improvement in housing affordability for the March quarter shows further movement in a direction that should be encouraging to first home buyers,” Mr Kasehagen said.

“A possible downside is that a pre-election slowdown in green-fields land releases from developers who were expecting an entirely different election outcome may see increasing demand add to pricing pressure through delays in available supply of land for stand-alone housing.

“What is fairly certain is that a combination of factors now makes it likely that people wishing to enter the property market for the first time will be facing a pickup in competition from other buyers – particularly in the East Coast residential housing market – as restrictions on lenders are further eased and interest rates remain at historic lows.”

Rental affordability, based on the proportion of family income needed to make rent payments, however, increased by 1 per cent up to 25 per cent on a national scale, improving in the most in the Northern Territory with a decline of 0.4 of a percentage point down to 20.9, along with NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia, but declined in the most in Tasmania by 1.2 per cent and in South Australia by just 0.2 of a percentage point up to 22.2 per cent.

First home buyers also saw a drop according to the report, declining by 19.7 per cent over the quarter.