Perth home owners brace for more pain

Home owners in the resources hub of Perth are bracing for more pain as job cuts continue and figures show a 2.3 per cent fall in house prices this year.

Perth home owners are bracing for more pain as the mining sector continues to shed jobs and more homes hit the market following steep house price falls this year.

Perth house prices fell 2.3 per cent in the year to date, CoreLogic RP Data figures released this week show.

It comes as resources companies prepare to cut hundreds more jobs in Western Australia following the release of their financial results last month.

It now takes an average of three months to sell a house in Perth, with vendors discounting properties by an average of 6.9 per cent amid high volumes.

The number of residential properties on the market has risen 0.7 per cent in the past month and 4.6 per cent in the past year, with almost 25,000 homes now on the market, SQM Research figures show.

Asking prices for Perth houses have fallen almost five per cent in the past year, SQM says.

CoreLogic RP Data head of research Tim Lawless said Perth buyers now had more choice.

"Higher stock levels in Perth suggest vendors may need to be more flexible in their pricing expectations," Mr Lawless said.

Meanwhile, West Australian Premier Colin Barnett said weak commodities prices and lower company profits were casting a shadow over an already brittle local economy.

"We're pretty much at the bottom," Mr Barnett told Fairfax radio in Perth on Wednesday.

"I think we've seen the worst of it but there are still some redundancies taking place."

Some employees in the private sector were taking pay cuts of up to 20 to 30 per cent, he said.


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Source: AAP



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