What makes diamonds worth more than glass? What makes gold worth more than lead? What makes the same house worth more at auction in 2023 than in 2022? The answer to the first two questions is the same: scarcity. The answer to the third question is a little more complicated, but scarcity is certainly playing its part at present.

The number of prestige properties entering the market continues to be lean, and this is helping create buoyant prices across Melbourne’s most desirable suburbs. The upper end of the market remains strong, and is getting stronger, with buyers eager to snap up the right property. At Abercrombys we have recorded extremely robust prices for triple-A houses at auction over the last month.

Australia’s housing market (Said by economists a year ago to be overheated. And said by journalists to be in need of severe correction. And foretold by share brokers and crypto-spruikers as a type of bubble that would do the thing that bubbles invariably do…) has fully recovered from its 2022 dip. Domain reports that the recovery has moved through its third quarter of growth for houses and second quarter of growth for apartments. Records are about to be set.

Nationally, house prices regained 2022’s decline in the October just gone and have risen by 4.93% this year. And with the spring selling season now at full gallop market activity is ramping up further. At Abercrombys we’ve observed both buyer and seller confidence is high. October marked the tenth month in a row of national home price growth.

This is not to belittle or ignore the financial and lifestyle pain that many investors endure when the RBA ratchets up the money rate again and again – but one must observe that it is remarkable how impervious the market has proven itself to be against the RBA’s frequent interventions. Interventions which have now, hopefully, ended.