A few days ago, CoreLogic released their Hedonic Home Value Index report for April and it confirmed what we’ve been seeing ourselves over the course of the month: there’s a big drop in activity as demand continued to fall. However, during April we noticed nobody was panic selling or enforced selling their properties and because of that, we anticipated housing values to remain stable.

And that’s what the Corelogic report confirmed: nationwide, house values continued to rise. From the major capitals, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, only Melbourne had a small decrease of point 3 percent.

Sydney and Brisbane continued their upward trend, as did nearly all other capital cities. So upon reading through the report, I actually felt quite comfortable and I was surprised to read the following headline on a major website: Melbourne house prices fall, Sydney loses steam. Pay attention to the words being used: Melbourne prices fall.. Why use that word? It dropped 0.3 percent. In a Covid-19 ravaged world! Dropping 0.3 percent I consider a win!

Now, let’s look at what’s in store for May. According to the usual economists, we can expect a serious drop, given the usual 3 months before any economic events translates into the property market. But what is nearly impossible to read about, are the positive markers, very little is being written about that. If I only look at one: Group Inspections and on-site auctions in Sydney this weekend. In my opinion, it’s a massive win for the property market. Surely that’ll result in increased demand, further motivating vendors to switch from private treaty to auctions.

There where I normally would have predicted May to be slightly negative for most cities, I now carefully predict we may see a similar month to April, slightly positive nationwide. And even if I’m wrong about it, even if the property market in Sydney and Melbourne drops by 10-15%, let’s not forget that Melbourne is still up 12.4% over the past 12 months and Sydney 14.3%. That includes April.

I am looking forward to seeing if the property market manages to outperform expectations in May and we avoid negative house values nationwide.