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While Australian auction clearance rates appear to be rebounding, led by a noticeable improvement in Sydney, that’s yet to have a meaningful impact on prices which continued to fall last week. According to CoreLogic, the prices across Australia’s five mainland state capitals fell by 0.1% last week in average weighted terms, taking the decline over the past month to 0.4%. In contrast to auction clearance rates which had Sydney at the top of the charts based off preliminary data, the national decline was yet again led by Australia’s largest and most expensive housing market where prices fell by a further 0.2% during the week.

That took the gains in Sydney over the past year to just 0.1%, meaning prices are now going backwards in real, inflation-adjusted terms. That’s a far cry from the double-digit percentage gains seen less than a year ago. Elsewhere, prices fell by 0.1% in all other capitals over the week, including in Melbourne. As seen in the table below from CoreLogic, that saw prices go backwards in all of these centres by between 0.2% to 0.3% over the month.