OUTSTANDING home value growth over the past five years has pushed some buyers out of contention for a swath of Hobart homes.
As price brackets creep higher but wages remain stagnant, Hobart’s property market faces an affordability crunch.
This issue has been highlighted in a report from PRD Research, which revealed young buyers or those on a tight budget had little access to much of the housing market.
The report’s house price breakdown for 2021 sales revealed that buyers with less than $549,999 to spend have access to just one in 10 (10.7 per cent) homes in Hobart’s inner ring suburbs. Extending to the middle ring opened these buyers up to 33.3 per cent of homes.
The report found about 30 per cent of inner ring Hobart homes fetched prices in the $550,000-$749,999 range. In the middle, this price bracket accounted for 39 per cent of properties.
In the top range, above $850,000, Hobart house sales accounted for 42.9 per cent of inner ring sales versus 17.6 in middle ring areas.
PRD chief economist Dr Diaswati Mardiasmo’s report put a spotlight on a market that is still recording median price increases month after month, alongside broken suburb price records and extraordinarily low levels of rental availability.
The rental sector has been struggling with some of the lowest vacancy rates in the nation for years and 2021 was no different with a rate at less than 0.5 per cent.
Dr Mardiasmo described Hobart’s middle ring as the darling of all middle rings with the most affordable median house sale price point and yet the highest five-year growth compared to Australia’s three largest cities, with growth ranging from 9.8 per cent up to 36.8 per cent.
