How bad is COVID for house prices compared to other great crashes of history? – ABC News

Experts say a decline in Australian house prices since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet anywhere near as steep as other historic market crashes, but this time there’s little ammunition left to blast the economy and the real estate industry out of a trough.
Key points:

• Combined capital city property values were recovering before coronavirus
• There are concerns the pandemic will lead to a protracted recovery
• Values in some cities have so far been relatively unaffected by the virus

The most recent figures show residential property values in Australia declined for the second consecutive month as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic took its toll on the market.
In CoreLogic’s latest home value index national values fell 0.7 per cent in June, following on from a 0.4 per cent decline in May.
However, with the Federal Government currently pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy, home owners will not know for months whether the current decline can be halted, or if it will continue its downwards trajectory once those stimulus measures dry up.
How was the market before COVID-19 hit?
CoreLogic head of research Tim Lawless said the recent market downturn since 2017 was already much larger than previous fluctuations, even before the virus took hold.
The national property market had been in a recovery phase after plunging 10.2 per cent from a peak in 2017, until coronavirus hit.
CoreLogic’s head of research Tim Lawless says it’s unclear how protracted this downturn will be.(Supplied: CoreLogic)
“The housing market in Australia was moving through a downturn, between the middle of 2017, and a floor, which was in about the middle of 2019,” he said.
“Through the second half of 2019 the market was very much in a recovery phase after values fell by around about 10 per cent from peak to trough.
“Housing values went through a fairly swift recovery through the second half of 2019, and then into early 2020,

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