Property Update - February 2026

Monthly highlights
 

• This was the smallest rolling quarterly change in national home values since the three months ending August 2025, highlighting a slowdown in the pace of capital gains

• Although the pace of growth has slowed, a clear two-speed dynamic remains at play across the capital city housing markets. The mid-sized capitals are all recording monthly gains above 1.0% while the largest capitals have seen growth slow to just 0.1% to 0.2%.

• Monthly home sales tend to show extreme seasonality in December and January, however the annual trend shows a 4.1% increase in the number of home sales nationally. The rise was mostly driven by regional parts of the country, where the estimated volume of home sales was 7.0% higher in 2025, compared with a 2.5% rise in volume across the combined capitals.

• With a softer than average flow of new listings to market, alongside higher levels of purchasing activity relative to a year ago, the volume of advertised stock remains well below average. Nationally, inventory levels were 17.8% lower than at the same time last year, ranging from a 36.9% drop in Perth to a 1.2% reduction in Regional South Australia.

• The annual change in rents has been reaccelerating since mid-2025, with the national rental index up 5.4% over the 12 months to January. Six months ago, rents were rising at the annual pace of 3.4%. The rental vacancy rate has eased off slightly since the record lows of 1.5% in September last year, rising to 1.7% in January. 

• Dwelling approvals were 14.9% lower in the month of December, the result of a volatile trend across the unit sector. House approvals ticked 0.3% higher over the month while the number of units approved fell by 31.6%, reversing a 32% rise in unit approvals in November. Over the year there were almost 196,000 dwellings approved, a 12.8% rise on the year prior, taking approvals roughly in line with the decade average, but still well below levels required to reach Housing Accord targets

• In a unanimous decision from the RBA monetary policy board, the cash rate rose from 3.6% to 3.85% in February, the first increase to interest rates since November 2023.

Download the report here (PDF 3MB)