The report found that the proportion of income required to meet rent payments decreased to 23.8 per cent, a fall of 1.2 percentage points over the quarter and a decrease of 0.3 percentage points compared to the same quarter 2018.
REIA President, Adrian Kelly said housing affordability declined marginally across the country in the June quarter 2019.
“This is due to the rise in the average loan amounts after the lower levels of the March quarter – which appears to be an annual pattern,” Mr Kelly said.
“With the exception of Western Australia, housing affordability declined in all states and territories. Although average loan amounts increased in all states and territories between 0.2 per cent and 6.2 per cent only Western Australia’s family income surpassed their increase in the loan amount.”
Mr Kelly said the total number of loans increased over the June quarter by 6.6 per cent.
“The number of loans to owner-occupier first home buyers has recorded increases in five of the six months of 2019.
Looking to WA specifically, Realmark Group Managing Director, John Percudani said, “The housing affordability in WA has improved with the proportion of income required to meet loan repayments decreasing to 22.4 per cent.”
“WA has also seen an increase in first home buyers hitting the market, reaching 3,473 in the June quarter, up 4.8 per cent over the quarter.”
At Realmark we have seen an increase in demand for established suburbs and people focusing on long term investment, school catchments, and development opportunity properties.”
“Diving into the rental market for WA, we have also seen improvement across metro and regional markets. Demands have increased significantly with vacancy rates for Realmark sitting at 0.61%* compared to the market average of 2.9%^”
According to the REIA results the June quarter saw the proportion of family income required to meet the median rent decreasing marginally to 16.4 per cent, a decrease of 0.1 percentage points over the quarter but an increase of 0.1 percentage points compared to the year before.
*Realmark South Vacancy rate
^REIWA June quarter vacancy rate