It doesn’t really matter whether you worked last month, walked around the local park, or sat and watched the Olympics for hours every day; either way, chances are your home — if you own it — made more money than you did.
The average house price is rising faster annually than the average national wage, and the latest research from Dr. Andrew Wilson’s My Housing Market shows some striking combined yield and growth figures for the last 12 months around Australia. 
At its most extreme, Sydney and Canberra’s median prices were rising more than $1000 a day over the last three months.
But the current lockdowns are weighing heavily on consumer and business confidence, and the continual conveyor belt of negative messages in the media is starting to get many people down.
Will the lockdowns kill our property markets and our economy?
That’s one of the many things I’ll be discussing in this week’s Property Insiders chat with Australia’s leading housing Economist, Dr. Andrew Wilson chief economist of My Housing Market.
Sales and listing numbers are suffering from the lockdowns:
Watch this week’s Property Insider video as we discuss how the lockdowns are affecting the markets and what’s likely to happen moving forward. 
While buyers are still keen to purchase properties, vendors are reluctant to put their properties on the market due to the uncertainty caused by the latest wave of COVID outbreaks and lockdowns at a time when it’s difficult for potential purchases to inspect their properties.
Remember buyers are sellers and sellers are buyers, so many potential sellers are currently putting their selling decisions on hold.
- Sydney property listings are down 36% month on month. Sydney property sales are down 29% month on month.
- Melbourne property listings are down 71% month on month and sales numbers are down 40% over the last month.
- Brisbane property listings are only down 1% over the last month and the number of properties sold is up +7% in the last month
Despite increasingly onerous lockdowns our pandemic-stricken housing markets just keep rising.
Even though this weekend our auction markets were really a tale of two cities.
Watch this week’s Property Insider video as we discuss the strong property markets including…
Sydney Auction Market
The Sydney weekend auction market continues to report boom-time results despite the deepening Covid lockdown restrictions
Sydney recorded a clearance rate of 83% on the weekend which was the same as the previous weekend’s result.
Sydney has now recorded consecutive weekend clearance rates above 80% for the first time since June.
Continuing high clearance rates may however reflect fewer choices for buyers with auction listings again falling sharply at the weekend.
Fewer auction withdrawals however are supporting a high clearance rate with the withdrawal rate on Saturday falling to 13.1%.
Melbourne Auction Market
Melbourne auction clearance result was dragged to a year low.
The Melbourne auction market tracked sharply backward on the weekend reflecting the ongoing impact of continuing local coronavirus lockdown.
This weekend’s clearance rate of 66% was the lowest recorded since October 17 last year and clearly, a result of another sharp increase in shut down related withdrawals rising from the previous weekend’s already high 29.5% of reported auctions to a remarkable 41.5%.
This was of course because physical property inspections are not allowed in Melbourne.
Rents Rise and Vacancies Fall Over Lockdowned July
It’s an interesting paradox at present, that while our economy is faltering because of lockdowns and at times up to 16 million Australians have been unable to leave their homes, rentals are moving up and house prices are shooting the lights out.
Declining vacancies and higher rents continued to characterise capital city rental markets over July, with increased Covid restrictions set to again disrupt activity.
House rents have soared over the past year with the exception of Melbourne where an exodus of Covid refugees may have acted to reduce demand for tenancies.
Increased demand for larger premises driven by rising work-from-home requirements and a lack of supply reflecting the collapse in investor activity of recent years, has resulted in sharply falling vacancy rates.
All capitals with the exception of Melbourne have vacancy rates below 2.0% with current trends indicating continuing tight conditions for the foreseeable future.
Melbourne house vacancy rates are however by contrast now trending upwards.
Despite sharply increasing rents over the past year overall, gross rental yields remain low and continue to fall in most capitals, reflecting strong increases in prices driven by continuing boomtime conditions.
Overall total gross investment returns inclusive of capital growth and rental income remain elevated and continue to rise as a result of booming prices growth.
Capital city unit rental markets are also tightening with most capitals reporting a fall in vacancy rates over July.
All capitals reported an increase in unit rents over the month with the exception of Melbourne where rents were steady. 
Annual unit rents have also increased in most capitals and although Sydney and Melbourne are the clear exceptions with sharply lower annual rents, the rate of rental declines in those capitals is now clearly trending downwards.
High unit vacancy rates in Melbourne and Sydney and lower annual rents primarily reflect continued elevated vacancies in local inner-suburban and CBD markets.
This is a result of a surge in new supply over recent years and a sharp decline in demand from first home buyers, students, tourists, and business travelers due to closed borders.
Similar to houses, recent strong prices growth continues to push gross yields for units downwards with declines in rents in Melbourne and Sydney adding to lower yields.
However, yields in Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth remain encouraging for investors with higher rents offsetting higher prices.
Similar to houses, total annual investment returns for units remain elevated, driven by recent strong prices growth.
Current lockdown restrictions will act to subdue rental market activity although underlying shortages of available homes generally will continue to place a floor under rents – particularly for houses.
Closed borders will also likely halt the recent sharp reduction in unit rental vacancies in Inner Sydney and Melbourne CBD as a result of falling interstate demand.
Lockdowns to cost more than $20b as economic contraction deepens
The economic cost of lockdowns is expected to surge past $20 billion if Greater Sydney’s stay-at-home orders are extended beyond August, further deepening the September-quarter economic contraction.
But while the outlook for the remainder of 2021 becomes less certain, personal finances appear to be holding up.
Just 0.4 per cent of the Commonwealth Bank’s home loan book, or 6800 loans, are currently in deferral, well below the 150,000 at the start of the pandemic last year, and retail spending remains high.
from Property UpdateProperty Update https://propertyupdate.com.au/property-news-headlines-forecasts/
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