Sydney’s housing market has continued along the recovery trend by recording a property price increase of 0.4% in the month of November. According to CoreLogic’s Head of Research, Tim Lawler, if “housing values continue to rise at the current pace we could see a recovery from the COVID downturn as early as January or February next year”. Buyer confidence remains strong as indicated by the auction clearance rates with Sydney’s holding at around 70% throughout the month of October, well above the decade average of 61%. Taking a more local perspective Epping has continued to outperform even these figures posting an auction clearance rate of 87% to close out November, whilst also producing a higher volume of transactions when compared to the same period last year. Of further news is the Government’s announcement of plans to phase out stamp duty for a more streamlined model.
Announced in the recent budget the government appears to have listened to the outcries of dissatisfaction with what many argue is an outdated property tax model, by proposing a plan to phase out stamp duty. Under the proposal purchasers would be provided an option to either pay the stamp duty up front or to opt for a smaller annual property tax, being both fixed amount plus a rate applied to the unimproved land value. For buyers this is a welcome proposal as the additional, and often high, transactional cost associated with purchasing a property would be removed allowing greater buyer confidence. From an economic standpoint this increased confidence would make buying a property easier, stimulating demand, whilst also providing the Australian government with a more reliable and fixed tax income to which it could better plan future budgets. In the short term however, one could argue that this could lead to a slump in buyer demand in the period leading up to the proposal’s expected implementation in mid-2021 however, as the market activity has defied expectations throughout this year only time will tell.
Taking on a local perspective the Epping market continues to remain in good shape, with both listing volumes and average prices steadily increasing. At present the average medium property price for housing in Epping sits at $1,820,000 (Data supplied by Hometrack Australia) and although a number of results are yet to be disclosed the most notable sale to occur during the month of November is that of 54 Somerset Street attaining a sale price of $2,400,000.
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