A report in the Australian Guardian recently says that the prices of houses in Australia, especially in Sydney and Melbourne, have slumped since their peak in 2017.

The report claims that house prices in Australia as a whole have fallen by 4.8% in 2018 with Sydney falling by 8.9%, in Melbourne by 7% and by 4.7% in Perth.

Following a sharp fall in December it appears that the decline is accelerating.  That said, the falls have come on the back of a significant surge between 2016 and 2017 suggesting that the property market could have been overheated. Sydney prices are now back to the level of August 2016 and Melbourne is back to the prices of February 2017. Perth has not seen houses this cheap since 2009 and Darwin since 2007.

The tightening of lending criteria has been blamed for the falls so that buyers who have funds are in a strong position to negotiate some good deals. The downturn has prompted Torsten Slok, Deutsche Bank’s Chief International Economist, to list the Australian housing market as one of the top 30 economic risks to look out for in 2019.

Although representatives of the Australian moving industry have noticed the fall in property prices they say it’s too early to see any shift in moving activity. “There does not yet seem to be any effect on imports right now, but I guess the lead time on this may mean we start to see some movement in time,” said Philip Gordon, Chairman of the Australian International Movers Association (AIMA). 

With the UK being an important source of migration to Australia, and with Sterling under pressure from the continuing uncertainty surrounding Brexit, this could be a good time for some pending migrants to take the plunge, cut their currency losses and get moving.