Interest Rates Hit New Home Sales Hard
“The high interest rate environment is clearly having a marked effect on the volumes of new home sales in New South Wales,” said HIA Executive Director, NSW, Mr Graham Wolfe.
“We recently announced that we do not expect to see a turnaround in the housing starts cycle until 2009/10,” Mr Wolfe said.
“Adding to this mix is the extraordinarily low vacancy rate experienced throughout all of NSW, which continues to burden tenants with incresing levels of rental stress. This scenario reinforces the point that rapid policy action is required to encourage investors back into the property market whilst at the same time reducing the levels of rental stress experienced by NSW tenants,” Mr Wolfe concluded.
HIA’s New Home Sales Survey is compiled from a sample of the largest 100 residential builders in Australia.
Elsewhere in the month of March detached house sales fell by 10 per cent in Queensland and were down by 5.8 per cent in South Australia and 0.8 per cent in Victoria. Sales increased by 4 per cent in Western Australia following a large dip in February.
