Australian Housing Market Sees First Time Buyer Record

First home buyers were responsible for 26.5 percent of all Australian mortages in January – the largest share of the market ever recorded by the Bureau of Statistics.

And as credit markets in many overseas markets collapse, Australia recorded a 0.7 percent rise in property lending.

Much of the impetus in the first time buyer market seems to have stemmed from a doubling of the First Home Owner Grant to $14,000 for purchasers of existing homes and a tripling to $21,000 for purchases of new-builds.

Australian residential property does not appear to have fared as badly in the current worldwide economic slump as overseas property. The most recent figures available from Property Monitors show relatively small price changes in Australia’s major cities compared with a year earlier.

House prices in Sydney are four percent lower than a year ago while in Melbourne, house prices are up almost one percent.

In the smaller cities of Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth, prices are up three percent, up 0.4 percent and down eight percent respectively.