RBA interest rate pause could prompt 12% rise in Sydney house prices

Sydney will lead the recovery and the NSW capital will experience the largest gains of up to 12 per cent in its property sphere.

That’s as long as the Reserve Bank of Australia doesn’t hike interest rates past four per cent and then starts to reduce them in the second half of 2023.

New research from Christopher’s Housing Boom and Bust report for 2023, released on Wednesday, came up came up with four different scenarios to forecast what would happen next year.

If interest rates don’t surpass four per cent, then real estate across the country will on average enjoy a three to seven per cent lift.

And if the rates start to go down, Australia’s property market could be nine per cent higher than they are right now.

But properties could decline in value by as much six per cent in a worst-case scenario where interest rates continue to rise and inflation keeps going up.

The cash rate currently sits at 2.85 per cent.

The report said that if interest rates do stagnate, then the property market will undergo a rapid recovery.

This would be because “of the rise in overseas arrivals, the return to the office, the existing shortage of rental accommodation, the new stamp duty/land tax changes and the expected ongoing strength of the Sydney economy”.

There are already “signals” of a possible price rise taking place, with freestanding houses in Sydney’s eastern suburbs experiencing increased demand.

Melbourne is forecast to recover some of its losses but at a “slow pace”.

Louis Christopher, Managing Director of SQM Research said, “No doubt it will be a very challenging year for the RBA to walk their tightrope and pull off a soft landing for the Australian economy.

“However, contrary to current popular opinion, I believe they will manage to do just that.”

Australians have so far been hit with six consecutive months of interest rate rises after more than two years of the rate being at a historic 0.1 per cent low.

Properties across the country have dropped in value in the past 11 months as a drop in demand changed the market drastically from the year before.

Nearly 150 suburbs have lost their $1 million property price tag in the past dew months as the real estate downturn takes impacted homeowners across the country.

New data from PropTrack, exclusively compiled for news.com.au, found that 144 suburbs in Australia have been kicked out of the million-dollar property club since interest rates began rising in May, along with a crackdown on loans and the increasing cost of living crisis.

Of those, NSW had the most suburbs that suffered from dramatic median price plunges which effectively lost them their million-dollar status. In all, 63 suburbs dropped out of the seven-figure threshold in the state.

Then in Queensland, 39 suburbs got the boot while in Victoria, 20 dipped below the $1 million mark.

Meanwhile, in the ACT only 14 suburbs experienced a drop in value while Tasmania and South Australia lost three suburbs.

Western Australia and the Northern Territory only saw one suburb each drop below $1 million in value, although it’s worth noting they had a much smaller pool to begin with.

The top 10 suburbs with the largest drops in price came from Brisbane, the NSW Central Coast (north of Sydney) and Canberra.

Surprisingly, no Sydney suburbs were in the top 10.

Many of the areas that dropped out of the millionaire’s club had only managed to scrape their way in last year during the housing boom, which saw properties rise nationally by 25 per cent.

However, the largest drop in value was just over 16 per cent, which means not all the gains from last year have been wiped out.