Property prices in one well-to-do Sydney suburb have plunged $715,000 in just nine months.
The median house price in Mosman, North Sydney, peaked at $5,815,000 in January but has tranded downwards since.
By June, the median price fell 12.4 per cent to $5.1 million. The 12-month decline was 9.7 per cent, or a $550,000 drop, according to Domain’s latest House Price Report.
Mosman is one of two mega wealthy Sydney suburbs, where the median house price is above $5m, to have experienced a decline over the past 12 months.
Bronte in the east recorded a 8.5 per cent drop to $5,675,000, according to reporting by the Sydney Morning Herald.
According to Dr Nicola Powell, Domain’s chief residential economist, Sydney’s high-end burbs have largely remained immune to the recent property price downturn thanks to supply and demand factors.
“Scarcity is the biggest driver of demand in those particular locations. There are only so many pockets of Sydney that are waterfront and offer a premium lifestyle,” she said.
According to Domain data, some 247 homes were sold on-market in the 12 months to June.
In areas like Dover Heights and Rose Bay, a combined 104 homes were sold in the same period.
Sydney’s most prestigious suburbs are small, which keeps their supply down, said Ms Powell.
“Mosman is a much larger suburb,” she said.
Peter Kelaher, from Mosman-based PK Property real estate, said NSW state government changes to building regulations were having an impact.
The government’s low and mid-rise (LMR) planning controls, which came into effect in 2025, allow apartments blocks up to six storeys to be built within 800 metres of town centres and transport hubs.
In place like Mosman, which has a long and narrow town centre, that radius reaches into the suburb’s priciest real estate.
“There is a lot of fear and anger amongst residents – so much so that some people are selling at a cheaper price to get out of the area,” Mr Kelaher said.
The house price plunge sweeping capital cities does not undermine Treasury modelling on the federal budget’s market impact, Treasurer Jim Chalmers says as fresh data shows property values fell for a fifth consecutive month in August.
May’s budget scaled back capital gains tax discounts for investors and restricted negative gearing to existing investments and new builds in a bid to redirect investor cash into new housing supply while cutting competition for first-home buyers.
The Treasury assumed the changes would reduce house price growth by 2 per cent.
But paired with higher interest rates, median property prices were last month 3.6 per cent below the record high in March, according to analytics firm Cotality.
Mr Chalmers on Wednesday urged against comparing “outcomes from the first couple of months with the Treasury assumptions over a couple of years”.
“Treasury assumptions are over a couple of years, not the first couple of months,” he told a press conference in Canberra.
“Second thing is: It’s wrong to attribute softness in the housing market or auction clearance rates to any one factor.
“House prices and auction clearance rates were already softer before the budget, and that’s because a key driver of that is interest rate movements as well as developments in the economy more broadly.”
He added that property investing “is a longer-term proposition, and people are in a rush to draw conclusions about the next few years based on the last few months, or indeed movements in prices or auction clearance rates before the budget as well”.
“It’s not actually unusual over the last couple of decades to see house prices come off a bit, even though we’ve had extraordinary price growth since the turn of the century,” Mr Chalmers said, pointing to “at least seven occasions in the last two decades” where prices have fallen before rebounding.
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