Darwin home owners selling up in nation's 'strongest property market'

Darwin home owners selling up before potential housing market downturn In short: Darwin's housing market is defying a national property price slump with house prices up 0.3 per cent. Darwin is the third most expensive capital city to rent a home behind Sydney and Perth. What's next? Cotality's head of research says the market could turn if interest rates rise next month. Lisa-Joy Cron bought her Palmerston home in 2010, just before Darwin's property market crashed — now, with prices rising after more than a decade of stagnation, she's weighing up selling before a possible downturn. "I think right now is a good time to sell,"she said. "Purely because of the profit I could potentially make, and to take advantage of the good market in the Northern Territory at the moment … particularly with the interest rate rises." Ms Cron said if she were to sell right now, she hoped her property would go for at least $300,000 more than what she bought it for 16 years ago. A growing number of Darwin home owners and investors are listing their properties to cash in on rising prices, but experts at real estate analytics company Cotality warn there may only be a small window to get a good price. Cotality head of research Gerard Burg said Darwin was defying the national property price slump, recording the "strongest property market in the country". Property prices increased only modestly for the month of September, with house prices up 0.3 per cent and units up 0.8 per cent. He said Darwin was now the only capital city where house prices were rising, largely due to limited supply and years of sluggish building activity. Although more home owners were listing their properties, Mr Burg said there were fewer buyers, indicating the tight property market may be gradually unwinding. "There is still some uncertainty around where property demand is heading in the coming months," he said. "There is the risk, of course, that the RBA may do another hike to the interest rates in November, and that would have another further impact. "So it is possible that Darwin might start to experience the broader national downturn that we're seeing." He said the market was already showing signs of cooling. "At the midpoint of January, [the total number of properties for sale was] around 60 per cent below average," Mr Burg said. "It's now sitting around 40 per cent below average and is continuing to track up." Real estate agent Kerri-Ann Laurence, who has sold homes across Darwin for more than two decades, has also noticed an uptick in listings since January but said "historically, it's still quite low". She said the majority of her clients were either relocating, moving for family reasons, upsizing or downsizing. "I've no doubts some of the downsizers in particular are seizing the opportunity," she said. Ms Laurence said she'd also noticed the recent wave of interstate investors — who, over the past year, had been snapping up properties across greater Darwin within days of them being listed — was now easing as prices continued to rise. However, she said she expected the market to remain on an upward trajectory. "There's been plenty of projects on the boil — Beetaloo gas is now flowing, I think that will lead to more investment, and in a small town like Darwin, it doesn't take much," she said. "If one of these projects needs 1,000 [workers] on the ground, that's going to make a dramatic difference in the real estate landscape overnight." Darwin remains among the most expensive capital cities to rent a home, ranking third behind Sydney and Perth. Cotality's latest data revealed the median dwelling rental cost rose by about 11.6 per cent year on year, as of September. The Top End city's vacancy rate remained tight, sitting at about 1.9 per cent, Mr Burg said. "That means that in some locations in Darwin, it is actually cheaper to purchase the house under a mortgage than it is to rent a similar property," he said. The shortfall in new home construction paints a bleaker picture for renters outside the capital, with the vacancy rate in Alice Springs sitting at just 1.4 per cent.