Perth housing: Cotality reports Perth’s property prices outperformed the rest of Australia last month

Perth’s property prices outperformed the rest of Australia last month as home values climbed around $4000 a week. Cotality’s latest home value index, published on Friday, shows Perth and Adelaide experienced the country’s highest growth in property values — up 1.9 per cent last month — compared with the national result of 0.7 per cent. Perth’s median property value now sits at $940,635 — the third highest in the country behind Sydney ($1.280 million) and Brisbane ($1.036 million). Values in Sydney and Melbourne were the biggest drag on national growth, sliding -0.1 per cent lower for the month. Other capitals continued to rise, with Brisbane and Darwin increasing by 1.6 per cent, Hobart up 0.9 per cent and Canberra up 0.2 per cent. Cotality research director Tim Lawless said as well as equalling the highest rate of growth for the past month, Perth’s annual growth rate of 15.9 per cent was the second-highest for capital cities, after Darwin’s 18.9 per cent. Even though the month-on-month increase was lower than November’s rate of 2.7 per cent, Mr Lawless said Perth’s market was still “extraordinarily strong”, growing by around $4100 a week. “The market’s just losing a little bit of momentum, like it is in most areas of the country,” he said. “Still, 1.9 per cent is is an extraordinarily rapid rate of growth, and you definitely wouldn’t describe that as being sustainable over the long term. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it does slow in 2026.” Mr Lawless predicted two factors would put the brakes on the rapid rise in house prices — the failure of incomes to keep pace and the likelihood of fewer rate cuts. “The outlook for next year is either for stable interest rates, maybe even a rate hike if inflation doesn’t get under control,” he said. “Interest rates are no longer going to be providing a level of stimulus for the housing market that we saw through 2025. “But secondly, affordability is just becoming more and more stretched as we see prices rises rapidly.” Mr Lawless said despite the slightly softer growth in December, Perth’s lack of housing supply was still driving buyers’ “sense of urgency” to get into the market. “The market ended the year with listings that were 49 per cent below average for this time of year,” he said. “For buyers, there’s still going to be this innate sense of urgency due to the low stock levels and the fact that even if price growth slows, it’s slowing from an extraordinarily strong position. I think it will still be a sellers’ market moving into 2026.” And there was no relief in sight for renters, with vacancy rates holding at 1.2 per cent. “The reality is for renters we have the same situation of a real under-supply of available rentals,” he said.