The Real Estate Institute of South Australia (REISA) has released a new quarterly state of the South Australian property market report called “Viewpoints”. This report is powered by South Australian residential property data company, PointData.

The report publishes up-to-date market data enabling REISA to provide its point of view on key market trends and to better inform its 2,000+ member base of the latest trends that are facing the real estate sector.

In the spring edition, analytics produced by PointData demonstrate that there has been a marked decline in the number of property sales over the past 3 months since COVID highs. The report notes that “The daily number of sales has once against dropped back to levels that mirrored transaction activity back in 2019 pre COVID”.

The report also notes that while this could be a regular winter cycle where property transactions do typically drop off before the typical spring selling season, the recently felt economic headwinds may be impacting upon vendors’ mindsets.

“It is unclear at this stage whether the dip in daily property transaction activity is reflective of a typical winter period sales or if the recent interest rate rises and cost of living pressures are causing vendors to think twice about selling” said Cain Cooke, REISA CEO.

Whilst there has been significant media coverage of property values dropping, most of this has been felt in markets outside South Australia with the quarterly property data showing that prices in SA are holding firm if not increasing with over two thirds of metro suburbs still increasing in value over the past 3-months, led by areas in Adelaide’s middle ring.

Mr Cooke said, “the takeaway message is that the property market in South Australia is resilient. South Australians will know that our property market doesn’t experience the highs and lows that our eastern states neighbours feel. This protects our property market and demonstrates the unparalleled investment that residential property is for South Australian property owners.”

The new report also contains powerful data about the percentage of properties within each suburb that fall beneath a median price of $450,000. This price is deemed by REISA as an affordable price point and was the Adelaide median house price prior to the pandemic property boom.

The data shows that whilst there has been significant commentary around the dwindling supply of affordable properties, there are still suburbs across Adelaide that offer affordability particularly in the middle and outer ring.

“The heatmap shows just how special Adelaide is. In other major cities, there wouldn’t be anywhere near the amount of suburbs within a 15km radius of our CBD that still offer the percentage of properties at an affordable price point like we do here.”

“In saying that, we are also aware of how affordability has been impacted by over 2 years of price rises.”

“It is our strong view at REISA that the time is now to action strategic policy that enables much more housing supply to enter the market in the next few years, otherwise we will see a market in Adelaide that is reflective of Sydney or Melbourne where first home owners have to purchase properties in areas that are hours away from their families.”

“We believe that policies such as sensible urban infill and housing density need to come to the forefront to ensure we have supply that meets the market demand particularly in centres where infrastructure is already in place and families can access the support and services they need.”

“Future reports will consider development considerations and we are excited to partner with South Australian tech company PointData who has unique property development data and analytics that can shape this conversation going forward” Mr Cooke said.

The next edition of Viewpoints is due for release in December.