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Staff Reporter
Perth’s prestige property market contributed to a bumper December for Western Australia-based group, ACTON.
“Sales for the December quarter were the highest for the year,” said Graeme Baxter, managing director for ACTON.
“Sales figures for the six months to December 2012 were 45.61 per cent higher than the six months to December 2011. Total sales for 2012 were 36.25 per cent higher than for 2011, showing a strong improvement across the market in all price ranges.”
ACTON said the top end of the market also performed well, “highlighting a sustained recovery across all areas of the market”.
ACTON Mandurah and ACTON South West led the way for the group, a point highlighted by some of their individual numbers.
“We started to see the market improve towards the end of 2011,” said Mr Baxter.
“Interest rates were falling and people felt prices were as low as they were going to go. Confidence started to improve and first homebuyers came back to the market. Increasing first homebuyer activity then allowed other people to upgrade, with this slowly flowing on to all areas of the market. It took some time for the effects to be felt in the top end, but we have seen the results over the last six months or so.
“First homebuyer activity was also very strong towards the end of 2012 and we should see the results of this well into 2013.”
While the number of sales has risen enormously, prices have yet to be seriously affected.
“While prices didn’t jump over 2012 we did see less discounting, and sale prices were much closer to the asking prices,” he continued. “We do expect to see some reasonable price increases over the coming year, however they will be gentle and sustainable, buyers don’t need to worry about being priced out of the market in the short term.”
