Outback WA housing market the nation's worst

Outback Western Australia is the worst-performing property market in the nation, according to a new report by ratings agency Moody’s, which also found housing prices in Perth have fallen by 8 per cent since peaking in December 2014.

In a report today, Moody’s labelled outback WA the worst-performing region in Australia in terms of the equity in mortgages attributable to housing prices.

“In fact, based on indexed house prices 43 per cent of mortgages from this region are in negative equity,” the financial services institution said.

Moody’s also found house prices in Perth have now fallen by 8 per cent from the peak in December 2014.

The report found that house prices in Perth are down by 1 per cent over the past seven years.

By contrast, Sydney housing prices boosted 74 per cent and Melbourne increased 52 per cent over the same period.

Across the entire state, Moody’s found the majority of mortgages in residential mortgage-backed securities in WA originated before housing prices began to decline from that 2014 peak.

“However, the percentage of loans from WA with no or negative equity has also increased by 4.4 percentage points to 4.6 per cent, which reflects the deterioration in housing prices over the past two years,” it said.

Earlier this month, Business News reported on CoreLogic data, which showed a 1.4 per cent increase in median house prices in December to $425,000.

The result was also the greatest quarterly result since April 2015, with dwelling values up 0.5 per cent over the three months to December.