| Unemployment and local Housing Data update | |
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This week sales have continued to decline even though they are still above average. Sales decreased by 5% to 799 with a 2% increase in house sales, a 21% decrease in unit sales and a 14% decrease in vacant land sales. The weekly sales graph below shows how quickly buyers responded to the housing stimulus packages but the reactionary increase was clearly not sustainable.
Listings increased by 1% to 10490 while rental listings continued their downward trend with a 2% decrease to 3869. We have provided some evidence of investors leaving the Perth market and being replaced by first homebuyers and with the rental listing rate still declining it would appear this trend is continuing. Last week we looked at employment figures using ABS monthly hours worked with WA recording a 1.5% increase for June. This week we look a little closer at the detail. Although WA’s unemployment rate at 8.7% is the second highest behind SA, WA’s participation rate at 66.6% is the highest in the country as shown in the table below. Furthermore looking back over previous months the drop in WA’s participation rate is much less compared to other states.
WA’s employment grew by 1.7% for the month of June and it is very interesting to compare full time employment, which fell by 38,136, with part time that increased by 248,967. However WA employment growth fell by 5.9% over the three months to June. What this is telling us is business has started re-employing in June reversing the downward trend showing increased confidence but businesses do not have the requirement for full time staff. It is difficult to tell what impact jobkeeper has had on these employment trends but increased employment growth coupled with increased hours worked is good news even if it is not an increase in full time jobs
Finally, Domain just released their June quarter median house price real figures. Our preference is to use Corelogics Home Value Index regression because median figures can be distorted due to changes in sales volumes at either end of the price range. However it is over a three-month period so is worth a look. Nationally prices decreased by an average of 2.0% with Perth house prices decreasing by 1.5% so Perth outperformed the national average. The biggest falls were in Melbourne, down by 3.5% and Sydney down 2.0%. With Melbourne going back into lock down you would think there is more pain to come for Melbourne property owners. The highest performing city by a long way was Canberra, which rose by 4.1%. This would be anticipated with so much Government guaranteed employment. Reproduced with permission from: |
