Nearly four in ten sellers in an Australian suburb lost money when they sold their home despite a double-digit rise in property values across the country.
While most Australians make money when they sell, homeowners in Melbourne’s inner city have been left out in the cold.
Apartment owners in the city of Melbourne were the hardest hit in Australia, with 38.9 per cent of homes sold at a loss of $54,500 on average, new data from CoreLogic revealed.
Elsewhere in the country, only one in 16 homes was sold at a loss, the data revealed, and homes in capital cities across the country rose 10.6 percent.
But in Port Melbourne, taking into account Docklands developments, average house prices fell 0.1 percent in the year to March to $1.67 million. Apartment values in the same suburb plummeted 1.3 percent to $798,563.
However, these were the exceptions in the latest CoreLogic Pain and Gain report, which showed that overall nearly 95 percent of homes sold at a profit, the highest level since July 2010.
By local government area, Melbourne City Council was the worst, with 38.9 per cent of homes sold at a loss averaging $54,500 (pictured, apartments in Docklands).
Homeowners typically sold their homes at a profit eight years and ten months after initially moving in, with homes increasing in value more than units.
“Although home values tend to suffer greater declines during crisis phases, they also tend to have greater increases in value,” CoreLogic said.
“Homes have always maintained a premium due to land value and development opportunity, as well as a relatively high volume of units built during the 2010s.”
But it was a different story in Darwin, where a third of homes sold at a loss (homeowners typically lost $70,000 of what they originally paid for the property).
Across Australia, 94.3 per cent of homes were sold for profit (pictured, a Sydney home)
In Larrakeyah, unit values fell 1.6 per cent over the past year to $447,117.
Home values in the Darwin suburb of Wulagi fell 0.9 per cent to $532,677, even less than Darwin’s median price of $584,538, making it the most affordable city in the country.
In Sydney, Parramatta also performed poorly: more than a quarter of homes in this council area were sold at a loss; the typical seller lost $49,750.
Houses in the Parramatta city area managed to hold their value over the past year, but south-west Sydney had suburbs where prices fell back.
In Austral, they fell 1.8 per cent to $920,159, putting it further below Sydney’s median house price of $1.4 million, but only one in eight homes in the council area of Liverpool was sold at a loss.