By JOHN VAN KLAVEREN
GEELONG land prices have eased after an “alarming” mid-year jump, according to a new report.
The median price of a vacant building block in Geelong had settled back to $196,000 after earlier reaching $204,000, said the Housing Industry Association-CoreLogic RP Data Residential Land Report .
Two years ago the median price was $179,000.
Despite the lower cost of land, the Geelong region still ranks as the fifth most expensive regional housing market in the country.
The Independent reported last year that Geelong was the 19th most unaffordable property market out of 378 major international centres.
Geelong ranked alongside the ex-urban area of outer-London for unaffordability in the 11th annual International Housing Affordability Survey.
But the June quarter figures signalled some relief from tight conditions in residential land market, said HIA economist Diwa Hopkins said.
“Today’s update shows that a rise in land sales was accompanied by an easing off in the pace of price increases in Australia’s residential land market,” Ms Hopkins said.
“This compares with previous quarters which saw strong price increases amid declining land sales.
“While the June quarter result is an encouraging development, what needs to occur is similar results being sustained over the longer run.
“A larger and more-consistent flow of shovel-ready land needs to be brought online.
“For this to happen, policy reform needs to address the key land supply bottlenecks including unnecessarily long planning delays, slow and insufficient release of residential land, excessive and inappropriate infrastructure funding arrangements and excessive zoning restrictions.”
CoreLogic RP Data research director Tim Lawless said the break in the trend of declining land sales was a positive outcome.
“A 17 per cent jump in vacant land sales is impressive but land sales remain lower than the June quarter of last year and follows three quarters where volumes consistently fell and prices rose.
“The most encouraging sign is that this quarterly rise in vacant land sales is broad based with five of the six states showing a substantial boost in sales.”
Nationally, residential land sales increased 17.6 per cent in the June 2015 quarter while the median residential lot price increased by 0.6 per cent over the quarter to sit 5.2 per cent higher than 12 months previously.
