Ballarat property owners can breathe a sigh of relief as the region is unlikely to experience the significant decline in house prices that is forecast for major cities, property professionals say.
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The latest housing report by ANZ Bank has predicted house prices in capital cities will fall by 18 per cent by the end 2023 driven by reduced borrowing capacity.
The fall is projected to recover by 2024.
Ballarat Buxton Real Estate director Peter Burley said when the market tightens generally regional property prices hold, with the impact instead seen in a decrease in buyer inquiry.
"But the inquiry that we do get is more genuine, so they're moving for work or job transfers or upsizing or downsizing or death or divorce," he said.
Mr Burley said the time to sell may go back to the pre-COVID expectations of about two to three months instead of a matter of days.
"The shift in Ballarat typically is not so much prices declining, but as there's more properties that are coming on the market and less inquiry, buyers have a bit more choice, and therefore what happens in Ballarat is days on markets gets pushed out a bit."
According to Real Estate Institute of Victoria (REIV) data, Ballarat experienced an average 21.1 per cent rise in property prices in the past year.
The same data showed comparative regional centres, Bendigo and Geelong, experienced an average rise of 21.1 per cent and 14.2 per cent respectively.
The suburbs that showed the highest annual increases in the Ballarat region were Soldiers Hill at 38.7 per cent, Lake Wendouree at 37.9 per cent, Lucas at 37 per cent, Miners Rest at 34.9 per cent, and Invermay Park at 30.9 per cent.
REIV president Richard Simpson said trends behind the "ballistic" regional price growth were twofold - and ongoing.
"It's the increase in demand from people moving away from central Melbourne out into the regions ... tree-changes away from the COVID lockdowns," Mr Simpson said.
"That trend, although it's slowing down as people return to offices a bit more, there's still a strong desire to work from home for a couple of days in the regions ... and travel a couple of days to the office during the week.
"The other thing that's impacting is on the supply side.
"There are just not enough new properties being built in the regions at the moment, so that underpins the prices of property because there isn't a lot available."
Despite the growth, the median house price across Ballarat sits at $570,000, lower than the median for regional Victoria at $625,000.
In Bendigo the median house price sits at $575,000, and in Geelong, the figure is significantly higher at $795,000.
Ballarat Real Estate general manager Allister Morrison said the affordability of the region was a factor in its resilience against a severe decline in prices.
"The initial entry-level housing is really quite affordable in contrast to metropolitan markets, so the affordability factor for regional Victoria still is quite distinct," Mr Morrison said.
While Ballarat may have hit the peak of property price growth, Mr Morrison said judging by open house attendance numbers he was seeing, for now, demand in the region will remain steady.
"We've had a couple of sales that have happened recently where they've sold above the top end of the range, so the competition has been quite strong for it so we haven't noticed an impact at this stage," he said.
"It's a pretty good marketplace.
"We judge it a lot on attendances and opens and there's still people out and about."
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